I am an empath. I'm pretty sure that's due to constantly trying to read my narcissist mother during my childhood, but regardless, when I encounter someone in pain, I really feel it. I want to help them.
When you post, Howcthappen, your pain comes through. If you were one or two years out from dday, I would think, "It's a process. She'll work through it." But you are five years out, five years with a remorseful spouse who has been doing the work (it seems anyway), so now it feels to me as if you are stuck. And I feel for you, I really do. It's a long time to live with this level of anxiety.
It really has always been a dealbreaker. Until it happened.
I get what you mean here, but you cannot have it both ways if you want to feel peaceful again. If it's a dealbreaker, you must leave. If you want to stay and find peace, you have to work through whatever is holding you back. You cannot say, "It was a dealbreaker but I'm staying" and expect to feel any peace inside. That seems to be where you are at.
The WS heals the WS.
But the BS heals the BS.
That's where you are at, needing to work on you and your feelings and why you cannot relax even though you want to stay in this M. Why is it so scary to D and find peace alone? Or why is it so scary to trust yourself so you can experience peace in your M? The answers are inside of you, and a good IC is what you need if you cannot find those answers and work through these truths by yourself.
Because the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing but hope for different results. Something must change.
My gut is telling me that this experience has triggered a childhood wound, and you seem unable to connect the two events to realize your current hurts are being magnified by these old, raw childhood hurts. The new hurt of infidelity has layered itself on top of a painful childhood experience, basically ripping those old feelings open again. What that would feel like, as someone who has lived through it, is the acute sense that "This is how I felt when I was young all over again!" Or even "This person made a fool of me just like this parent did!" Something like that. When you find yourself making this comparison to childhood, you know you are up against an abandonment wound. It is very common for infidelity to trigger old abandonment wounds, but that makes it much harder to work through in present day. I had to confront my FOO hurts AND my H's behaviors at the same time to heal myself because the hurt went hand-in-hand. My personal abandonment thoughts sound like, "Selfish people are always disregarding me and doing whatever they want! Nobody thinks of me or cares about me." Those were my thoughts with my H when I found out what he was doing, but I was also talking about the way my mom had always treated me. My new hurt was layering onto old hurt.
I hope you consider the fact that you cannot say, even to yourself, "It was a dealbreaker, but I am staying" and hope to ever, ever feel better. It just doesn't work that way. It's a type of denial. So what is so scary that it's keeping you stuck in this denial, in this painful situation but unwilling to challenge the feelings behind it?
From my own and my H's experience, we use denial to avoid memories and emotions that we really, really, REALLY do not want to face again. They often involve our most upsetting, vulnerable moments from long ago, things we hoped were buried. But infidelity can and does bring that crap to the surface. I hope you will find the courage to unlayer this onion and get to the fear that is keeping you stuck. The only way out of the fire is to walk right through. Yes, it will hurt like hell as you confront things you'd rather not confront, but there is an exit, the only exit, on the other side of the flames.
Wishing you strength and peace.