SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Its been 18 months since my H had his A.
It has also been 18 months since I have been close to the A location.

I NEVER thought I would be afraid of a location, one that held my favorite restaraunt.
Telling my friends and family wouldn't make sense to them but I know it makes sense to you all.

Tomorrow morning we need to meet with a lawyer for our son not even 8 mins from her house and from where he would meet her.

I had the option of conferencing in by phone but this is a very big deal for our son and I feel like I need to be there in person to fully understand everything and advocate for him the best I can.

My H doesn't want to go , I don't want to go but we are going.

I am still very triggered by locations, words, names etc.

I am hoping that going tomorrow will help start to break the cycle of that or it could possibly make me spiral into oblivion.

I keep telling myself "its just a place, a City, one that you've been to hundreds of times and had fun being at" I am trying to do the pep talk.

If you're the praying type please keep me in em, if you're not , keep me in your thoughts!

Advice is welcome as well.

Lets get ready to do this!

It really is just a place. Just focus on where you are going and how you are helping your son. Take DDDEEEEEEPPPP breaths.

You can do this!!

You got this.

My reco is to honor your feelings about the place while reminding yourself you want to do as much for your son as possible.

It's OK to fear the location. Is it really fear? Is it mixed with grief? Anger? It doesn't matter - I think honoring your feelings is a Good Thing to do. If you can change focus when you get in the car to go, that would be great.

My bet is that focusing on your son will overcome the fear once you get there.

Is this your lawyer or the lawyer for the agency responsible for your son's accident? If it's your opponent, will your lawyer be present? It's best not to negotiate for yourself.

If it's your opponent, my reco is to listen and to ask blunt questions with no preamble - just ask. Do not offer any information. Do not respond to their questions with anything more than 'I'll think about that.' Do not make any agreement at all. If they ask if it's Saturday, respond, 'You can read a calendar as well as I can.' Anything you agree to will be used against you.

I'm very sorry you're in this sitch. The only decent part in this is that you said one thing that indicates your son is recovering his spirit, and that bodes well for the future.

But every lawyer for an offending agency and any lawyer for an insurance company is out for their client alone, so ,,, do not concede anything, even the day of the week.

You can get through it.
My UH affair took place in another state 4 hours away, that I’d been to a handful of times in my life.
When I found out, I thought, well at least it’s far away and I don’t have to go there again. Well wouldn’t you know, the next month my oldest son wanted to go on a college visit to that city- he had NO IDEA of the affair.
I was sick bc I wanted to support him and yet terrified to go there. For me, I made it all about my son and it was fine. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s where he is in school now, it’s a top 20 school, so I would never ever want him to forgo that opportunity, but there have been some meltdowns while visiting when it’s just my UH and I in the car. I made him take me to every place they went including her apartment. That was hard, but as we created our own memories it wasn’t so bad. Now I see it as bi$ch, I’m taking over your city. No longer does it bother me. I look forward to going to see my son!

It takes time and lots of processing, but you can do it. Good luck.

Bearly breathing and ink thank you!

Sisoon we realized that we needed a lawyer because we quickly realized that the one hired from the insurance company is not for our son at all.

Thank you for that advice! They are super big snakes.

Groot,
I haven’t posted in awhile but thought I’d chime in on this one. It’s 5 months post DDay for me; we are well into R and actually doing well and making a lot of progress BUT I still have lots of triggers about the A. It all happened in a private office that he was using and going to several times a week where they would meet to work together and then it developed into EA and finally PA, all inside his private, locked office. I had never been there but last month I told him I wanted to go. He rarely goes back since the A, mainly a quick stop to pick up mail as he knows it triggers me and also he doesn’t want to be there as he is ashamed of what happened and about what it has done to me and our marriage. (she is long gone and working somewhere else—her husband is now tracking her every move and all her devices so she won’t be trying to "stop in"). Even going to the nearby mall triggers me because sometimes they would walk over for lunch. Anyway, he took me to the office and as soon as I walked in I felt like throwing up in his trash can🤮. But I wanted to somehow put my mark on the place where it had happened. Not sure if it made me feel better or not but I felt like I had to do it. At least when he stops in there now there is some memory of me in that place. So I just wanted to come on here and say I know how you feel. None of this is easy but we do what we have to do to get by. My H is doing everything to show me he is truly remorseful and making us the priority he should have all along; now I just need to work on the acceptance and forgiveness part which is a real struggle. But I am determined to get there!

Prayers for peace and emotional protection when you are there.

Its really tough to face those location triggers but every time you do the "easier?" it will be. I live in the Dallas area and there is a small suburb called Addison, it is a town of nothing but bars, restaurants, offices and condos/apartments, no houses.

My WW's A started by meeting a guy in a bar in Addison and leaving with him for a ONS turned 2 month PA. I hated Addison for a long time, but my main vendor is there and eventually I reclaimed it and owned that location trigger.

On Fridays my W goes to work with me, we own the business so we spend the day together. I needed to go meet with the vendor and realized "oh shit we are about to go to Addison", but it was ok because I own this now, Addison belongs to me not the A.

Everything went fine and we were headed out towards one of our favorite restaurant bars to have happy hour (not in Addison, closer to our home). I get a call that a client needs me to go by and look a at house and give my opinion about something, it was close to where we were going so we headed that way. When we got to the neighborhood I realized it was AP's and not only that it was his street. My W sat there and said "are you going to be ok?". I said "yes, there is a reason this happening". I really think the trigger gods were trying to throw everything at me that day and came through it together. Had a great time at Happy Hour and at the end of the day my W went home with a real man .

As you process and encounter triggers you will learn something from them, you got this.

I NEVER thought I would be afraid of a location, one that held my favorite restaraunt.

I can certainly identify with this feeling.

I was in the US Marine Corps, I had been to plenty of scary places — so it bothered me quite a bit that I was bothered by revisiting a city on vacation that was a key part of the A.

I approached the trip with stone cold logic, and aimed at focusing on today instead the past, and yet, as we got closer to our destination (it was about an 8 hour drive), I couldn’t shake the flashbacks and the unpleasant thoughts.

By the time we got there I was fine. I just needed to — as Sissoon described - honor those feelings, and process them (as in why it could still bother me).

A smarter person than me pointed out our negative feelings are survival instincts.

My brain is on full time duty to protect me, from past, current and future threats. Going to that place allowed me to tackle those thoughts head on and go from there. While it was a real trigger, now it gets to be filed back where it belongs, and the place is just a place, with good memories and bad memories.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 5:41 PM, Sunday, April 13th]

Groot, my WW and her AP, my friend, visited numerous places around our local area. I constantly drive past them for work and on occasions force myself to pull into the parking lots where they'd meet, or drive past his home and his rental house where they met for an evening of fun. It's painful to be there because of the images my mind creates, but I force myself to confront these locations to overcome the fear of them. I am getting stronger mentally about these places but I have no interest in visiting them with her ever again in my life. At least not at this stage of my life. Be strong.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 10:44 AM, Monday, April 14th]

My WH went to hotels…..I had a reaction when we went to a hotel in NY. I will never be intimate with him in a hotel EVER again. I’m pretty tough but just seeing the area and hotels gives me a rise ☹️