SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello my SI friends,

We graduated therapy, our therapist said I’m ready and I agreed but my trauma brain has definitely spat the dummy out. I’d armed myself with a wonderful tool kit and I was IMO doing ok, but as soon as the scaffolding was removed my thoughts have been running away, not just running away like going down the rabbit hole but like flashes of random memories or things he said or things AP said or memories of before I knew etc etc, they are all random not connected and there’s no searching or digging done by me I’m just confused and it’s so noisy all day. I had to scream at myself this morning in my head to stop, just stop and F off. I’m wondering if this has something to do with us graduating therapy or if my brain is running a catalogue to see if I will react?.

As for my H and I, well we’re ok better than ok I think but I still have lots of anger and betrayal feelings, I don’t struggle with the thoughts anymore but they’re definitely there. The ones mostly there are the absolute ordacity of it all and the thoughts that he deserves to be with what he decided to cheat with. I also get angry that I’m angry at all, I get angry that I get sad, I get angry at being angry about being sad.

I mostly get sad because my husband has done everything over the past 13 months to show me that I’m everything to him, he’s not perfect but neither am I. He has made some incredibly selfish and stupid choices throughout our marriage, he’s resigned to the fact that he may never be able to put this right but he’s adamant that he’s never going to stop trying.
I get sad because the man I have now is the man who I married, somewhere along the line he got lost and never came back until now, It feels like I did it on my own, he was there but he wasn’t if that makes sense. I’m sad because I always deserved this man, he said that he’s so lucky I waited around so long and kept everything together, he is.

My self esteem flip flops too, mostly I know that I’m awesome for lots of reasons but also sometimes I feel garbage about myself and start attacking myself, I’m working on this.

I think one of the most destabilising aspects of infidelity for me is I was a person who truly believed that if you were a good person, kind and put goodness in to the world then this guaranteed you were safe, I believed that if you were bad and did bad things then bad things would find you so when infidelity hit I couldn’t understand why this had happened to me, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong and this still happened to me, that made my whole entire world internally collapse and the outside world became terrifying. I now know better but it’s taken a while.

Whilst I’m here I want to also thank each and every single person that has supported me here on SI, you all have helped me so much and many of you planted little seeds in my head that have grown and I cherish them. Thank you.

It hasn’t been very long for you.

Hang in there; it will keep getting better.

And you know what? I think that people who don’t have infidelity in their lives still have doubts, and anger, and sadness, and injustice. It’s part of being human.

Best wishes.

I get sad because the man I have now is the man who I married, somewhere along the line he got lost and never came back until now, It feels like I did it on my own, he was there but he wasn’t if that makes sense.

Just want to say I relate to this so much. Maybe it's grief. I've lost relatives, but mostly when they were elderly. Never lost someone young and in good health. It almost feels like grieving the loss of a spouse, even though they're right beside you. I'm sorry. I hear you.

You ARE ready. You've got the tools you need. You've got the strength you need. It's hard to exploit your resources when you're supported by a scaffold. Now you have the autonomy you need to blaze your own path. Congratulations!

BTW, one of the tools you have is the ability to ask for help, so ... you're not alone.

*****

It's still early. The SI rule of thumb for healing is 2-5 years. Patience....

*****

I was a person who truly believed that if you were a good person, kind and put goodness in to the world then this guaranteed you were safe....

I always knew that was a false belief, but I couldn't stop believing it until I was confronted by the injustice of my W's A. My tagline shows haw much time it took for me to get there.

I think the biggest loss most BSes face is the loss of illusions.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:27 PM, Thursday, January 29th]

I think the biggest loss most BSes face is the loss of illusions.

I think so, too. Maybe not the biggest loss, but certainly one of them.

I also get angry that I’m angry at all, I get angry that I get sad, I get angry at being angry about being sad.

That seems terribly familiar! I clearly remember hitting an intense anger phase after that first antiversary, which is pretty common. For me, I was angry that I wasn't even close to healed after a year and knowing that I would be spending at least another year dealing with this shit. It's just so unfair to put someone through so much for so little in return.

Something that really helped me was to pretend that I was single and focusing most of my energy and time on putting myself back together. I also focused on who I wanted to be moving forward. I tried to redefine what love and marriage meant to me. I used to think of it all as something of a computer's operating software; tossing that bad and updating it with better programming.

Setting and enforcing new boundaries also helped, especially with support and guidance here.

You still have a long way to go in your healing journey. Be patient and kind with yourself. Nurture your strength and spirit.

Yes, this sounds very familiar. When I thought I was feeling some relief and letting up a tad on the hyper vigilance ….my brain would double down.

It really hasn’t been that long for you. One technique my IC taught me that helped….is when I DO find myself spiraling…just telling myself that this is my brain doing what it was designed to do to keep me safe. That’s different from watching for new A behavior. Honestly, I didn’t stop watching for that for a couple of years.

Hang in there.