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My FWH’s AP is CONSTANTLY ON MY MIND!😫

Not a day goes by when she isn’t.

You all always advise us to stop allowing the AP to live rent free in your brain but how did you evict them?

[This message edited by Howcthappen at 9:20 PM, Tuesday, January 10th]

I haven't. It's been well over 5 yrs, my husband and I are completely reconciled and yet his AP still lives in my head.
But I have to say it's much better now and she lives there because I allow it. It's almost like therapy for me now.
The thoughts are not constant but the memory is still there.

Took me about ten years to get her completely out of my mind.

Thoughts became less and less but the obsessive thoughts lasted at least 5 years.

It takes time, lots of it.

I'm about 4 years out and it's still a problem for me too. Mostly, that he went "there?!?". That's what it took?! She's not nice or pretty...in fact, when I do run into FWH asks me how fat she's gotten. She's not someone he'd normally be attracted to...or so he says now. It's become a bit of a joke in that regard. The sting has diminished, but I'm still there on the daily.

I wouldn't say the AP was ever really evicted. More like taken out of circulation and transferred to the archives on microfiche.

Like annb, it took me a very, very long time. We live in the same small town so there is always a chance of running into her which added another element of difficulty. After lots of time I just didn't care that much about her or seeing her.

I didn't try to force the thoughts out but I didn't do things to reinforce them like googling her name or looking her up on social media. I knew her name and what she looked like that was enough.

It will get better with time.

The ap doesn't live very close to us, so I don't get reminders by seeing her.

My practice when I get these awful thoughts was to ask myself what I was feeling. Usually it was anger, fear, or grief, and I'd force myself to feel the pain and let it go. Once I dealt with the pain that generated the thoughts, ow disappeared from my head.

I don't know if there is a way to do it. If I did know, I would have consciously done it gladly.

At 6+ years out, my husband and I don't talk about the affair much. We talk about the AP even less. I hated her. More than anyone else ever in my life. I knew her. It seemed personal.

A week ago, I had a graphic and bad dream about the affair. That night i woke up and remember thinking my marriage was definitely over. I put my ring on another finger in the middle of the night. I always wore a ring on my finger before that even when separated. I texted my best friend in the middle of the night to ask if she would talk the next day. I was still freaked out the next day, but I couldn't remember what about exactly.

I talked to my husband that morning. During that conversation, I couldn't remember AP's name. It's hard to remember other details of her. When did that happen? I don't know.

Unfortunately, he still lives rent free in my brain. What makes it worse is his name, because its the same first name of a popular player on our major football team. Which is in the playoffs.

And he lives not too far away from where one of my wife's clients houses is, so there's always that fear that they'll run into each other. GPS has showed she has never deviated towards his house in all these years, but my paranoid mind always thinks they're somehow meeting clandestine and getting one over on me, despite all my surveillance tactics.

There are a few things that helped me.

First, the further you get from Dday, the less intrusive the thoughts are. Where I was the first year of R is very different from where I was 3 years past Dday.

Second, I realized it’s not the OW I knew about that was the issue. My H could be cheating with some new person he met at the grocery store (as an example). But b/c my H was doing everything possible to Reconcile, I had to keep taking myself "he’s not the lying cheating jerk he was b/c he’s doing everything he can to prove to me he’s changed".

Third, I had to force myself to stop the obsessive thoughts that would derail our R progress. That took a long time to overcome.

I also blocked her from all our phones etc. I was always afraid she would retaliate and contact my kids. So I did everything possible to protect them from that.

I decided not to live in the past. I had to tell myself every day for years "he’s not the lying cheating jerk he was". It worked b/c slowly I stopped obsessing over her. What helped was knowing that she was a pathetic drama Queen who played into my H’s Knight in Shining Armor mid life crisis affair b/c he was going to "save her" from her miserable self/life.

Once I restored my self esteem the OW wasn’t a threat. Because I knew I’d be perfectly fine if we D.

She’s still there. But she has been bumped from "what ‘power’ did she have over my wife?" to seeing how extremely pathetic she is. When I learned she had foisted herself on friends we share in common, became accustomed to their calmer and more peaceful existence, and then told them she wanted to live with them 6 months out of the year — I almost choked!!! Her mother had just passed away and the home she had lived in for years was sold … and she found herself homeless. (She has nothing because after stealing the house my wife helped pay for, she lost it to poor money habits.) And the inheritance was smaller than expected, but she spent money like it was unlimited. I think she is living with her sister, but it is possible her two sisters are splitting the responsibility for her between them. Who knows. I keep tabs so I will know if a blasted insane phone call will come in one day because she "needs" to talk to my wife, her ex, about something urgent and earth shattering. She still thinks she has “rights” to my wife in times of need and great stress — you know — rescue me anyway! 🤣

And yes, I do check her social media so I will be able to recognize her if we are unlucky enough to run into her. She has changed her "look" to the point my wife says she almost doesn’t recognize her anymore. Yeah — right! 🙄

[This message edited by OneInTheSame at 10:13 AM, Sunday, January 15th]

Time.

It is our greatest enemy isn’t it?

Oh, I hated him with everything I had. And I as afraid he would come back and she would leave and take my two boys away from me.

His eviction came in stages.

After a year, I threw away my "evidence" (in case of divorce).

Even though he broke the guy code(don’t f*ck another guys wife), he owed me nothing. We were not friends and had never even met. (My super mother in law told me this). This broke thru the hate, and it disappeared. I did not forgive him, he just became a non entity.

Finally, when my oldest turned 12, I knew I was safe.
Even if he came back and she left me, my oldest would not have gone with her, and no judge would break up two brothers. After I had the confidence I had my two boys, I rarely thought of him again.

Their relationship was not real, it was just a fantasy. I am real, with all my imperfections, and I am happy with myself. I think that is the real key-be happy with who you are-you are so much better than AP.

She's not been evicted from my brain - but she no longer is in the "high rent" district.

I accomplished this by a few things:

Taking care of ME
Living MY best life
Realizing that she existed in my life because of WH brokenness
Realizing she's bat shit crazy
Having a Cease & Desist sent
Researching the dynamics of LTAs
Retraining my brain (replacing intrusive thoughts with good ones)
Exercise
Prayer

This took YEARS and sometimes my brain tries to shuffle her to the front again. It takes great skill and energy to keep her in the back depths were she belongs

I wish I had an easy slam dunk answer.

My R is going really well, my M is going really well, my healing is going great.

AP still haunts my brain.

AP was a family friend, his OBS was a family friend, their kids played with our kids, we hung out. He always fronted as the older, big brother, they had moved to same new town about a year before us, so they took us under their wing.

I don’t know if those factors add to the length of time I’ve been dealing with this particular person.

He was older, but a little, rail skinny guy — if we got in the same ring, I would viewed as a bully, it is why I made the mistake of never seeing him as a threat to my M or my family.

But as others have said, it gets less and less.

I hope I would react in a civilized manner if he is silly enough to cross my path, no guarantee at this point.

Maybe a couple more years?

I don't think I can ever evict the AP from my brain - but I really am not a forgetter in that if I have had exposure to someone I will remember them. The answer is time. I used to ruminate about her, was angry at her, thought about her a fair bit. Now, 5 years out, when I think of the AP it's more like this:

I do not like pizza -pepperoni especially (which I know, makes me a weirdo) - to me it's always been desperation food (food you eat when there are few or no options). I never have liked pizza, but one time I ate pepperoni pizza after having too much to drink (way too much) and you guessed it - it came back up several hours later and yeah - can't do it anymore. Now pepperoni is disgusting to me - one of the few foods I simply cannot eat. When I think of it I shiver and banish it from my mind ASAP. If I'm around it my stomach turns and I get away from it - the smell alone is enough to make me feel sick.

With that in mind, to me now the AP is like pepperoni pizza. When I think of her I feel disgusted and my brain, without my even trying, wipes her from my mind ASAP and then I'm all good like she never was there. If I had to deal with her personally I would feel sick and would try to get our of her presence/get her out of mine immediately (preferably without having to interact with her) and then after a moment I would feel fine.

So she and pepperoni pizza share a little studio in my brain somewhere - and I'm fine with that.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 7:46 PM, Tuesday, January 24th]