Me WS. Him BS. 5 month PA DD 1 : Aug 2006. Minimized, Deflected, Blame shifted, Gaslit. DD 2: Aug 2023 not new affair just actual disclosure

Can’t Post in Just Found Out but I have Advice

Was reading 5BlueDrops post and a couple of things stuck out to me

The bottle cap in the shower, is called Super Spy Guy. It’s someone signaling you they were in the house and didn’t know she was taken. It’s like writing on the bottom of the toilet seat.

You are going to get a parking lot confession. Tell her you got an earlier booking get your parking lot confession so you can rework your questions and take the test when it is actually booked

3 comments posted: Wednesday, March 20th, 2024

Post your update

It feels like not much moves on this side, so I thought I’d post my update and invite y’all to post yours as well

I am 5 months out from DDay#2, 17 years out from the actual affair. It was a 5 month PA with a coworker who was from head office to help get the restaurant I worked at in order. Trigger train left for my husband in July and it took my dense ass until late August to figure out what was wrong

In the initial months it was just about going through BHs feelings and thoughts on the affair. I picked up a lot of empathy during that time. Read how to heal your partner, got a book on sexual disjunction since some issues came up. And alternated between hysterical bonding, yelling and shutting down.

I also did the timeline from 17 years ago which was very difficult given the time that has passed and the brain injury I got in the mean time. BH found old work schedules which were extremely helpful in figuring out when things occurred.

Picked up "Not just friends" in December and am working my way through that one. Late December I started IC. I did it after DDay1 but failed to actually address the childhood sexual assault and didn’t even bring up the attempted rape from later on. My new therapist is working on desensitizing me. We are working up through my trauma ladder so that I don’t immediately go to freeze when trying to discuss anything. Right now we are working on my imposter syndrome. I feel like I fail as a wife about 85% of the time because I don’t even know what a good wife is.

Things have gotten better with BH. We are no longer hysterical bonding but keeping a healthy sex life. We talk about the affair at least once a week as well as after my therapy. Things are slowly moving forward on me letting him in instead of keeping him at arms length and everyone else at 10ft. We are not healed by any means nor does either of us expect to be at this point. But forward motion continues

Would love to hear how y’all are doing

20 comments posted: Sunday, February 11th, 2024

Mindfulness

So I started IC a couple weeks ago. It’s taken a bit longer as the first therapist said she felt ill equipped to deal with my amount of trauma and so she passed my case in to a more Sr trauma therapist

So we have identified a few issues around decision making and boundaries. The first week she was trying to get me to identify when I was feeling anxious and then identify the thought that lead to it. Well my coping mechanisms have coping mechanisms so by the time I could identify I’m anxious I was already singing in my head to self soothe.

So now we are at working on mindfulness. She has given me a couple of exercises to work on to help me catch my thoughts. The ones she gave me are body scans and mindful eating. I am wondering if anyone here has any others they would recommend?

My sessions are all 2 weeks apart and I’d like to make faster progress and get to the part where we can actually start working on my screwed up thought patterns and boundary issues. But we can’t do that without first dealing with this issue.

11 comments posted: Thursday, December 28th, 2023

Timeline Organization

Hey everyone!

Been reading the boards for a few months but this is the first time posting.

My affair occurred much more than a decade ago and my BH and I managed to white knuckle it without actually dealing with it up to this point. Yes, I did all of the horrible things WS’s do in the beginning to make the healing as difficult as possible and so I am really fighting an uphill battle here to attempt to make this right.

In the interest of moving forward and helping to heal him, myself and our relationship, we are trying to follow some of the great advice given on these forum. One of which is the detailed as possible timeline.

So my question is in regards to the timeline, what did everyone use to organize it? At this point I have some emails with dates but things I remember are not well organized and I know it would be helpful if it was clearer for my BH.

I am open to any suggestions

15 comments posted: Friday, December 8th, 2023