Light heartedly, I can’t separate your nickname from an image of Peter Griffin, which gives me sympathy.
Remember the scene of the knee? Yes the trauma you got is going to last even longer than Peter’s hurt knee.
It’s normal when you get ptsd after brutal trauma. There are many testimonies of war veterans and other human tragedies who survived those traumas just to finally collapse at infidelity.
Isn’t something to take as lightly as it’s pictured in media and mainstream.
It’s in the sexual and emotional abuse family of trauma, and like any of those, is going to echo through your life for a,long time.
But if you address it like any trauma it can be resolved. Not saying it’s easy, because no matter how small the step might be to get to a better place, when both your leg bones are shattered to splinter taking that step up is almost as impossible as jumping to the moon.
But focus on healing and one day you will step up naturally and easily. That’s the day when you will get healed.
Here is the key, and I know it’s impossible to do it now, but it is a goal you can know when you will naturally reach:
All your tortures come from the brain constantly ruminating on the infidelity, whether you are aware or subconsciously, it never stops.
That’s the natural nerve system reaction to trauma.
And that triggers vagal, lymbic, systems, heart rate, leavin you in a permanent fight or flight mode.
You can’t relax because you can’t find the threat that destroyed you. You can’t feel safe because the threat that destroyed you is still sitting at your side while you drive. Your wayward.
You can’t fight because you’re emotionally attached to your threat.
And you decided not to flight, because you didn’t walk away from her.
That’s short circuits your survival system and fucks you up, like you feel right now.
There can’t be any fight or flight in your fight or flight mode. Hence the permanent anxiety.
The resolution comes when you realize the truth.
And truth is, she is no threat, she is just a woman. She is weak and broken and probably not worthy of you.
She was a threat because you uplifted her to be the center of your universe as you were promised to be hers.
That’s what did destroy you. That’s the threat your nervous system perceives.
Once you accept that she is just a woman and she doesn’t hold the place she used to that you once gave her, because she doesn’t deserve it, everything will fall into place.
I know that it sounds harsh and cruel but she proved to you for this to be the reality, and is what your nervous system needs to feel.
She isn’t the one woman who would commune her life force and soul with you unconditionally. She is just a woman who would hang on any man to keep standing in her feet, trade sex and validation with any guy just to keep her insecurities and fears in check, and devour loved ones for a temporary transactional feeling of power, just to drop back shortly into her inner misery.
And you? You are the prize. You loved her and held her dear. Even after her brutal mask off, you still didn’t cast her away, you gave her a great gift to still be at your side instead of being used and abused as she deserved from her worthless peers, the affair partners kind of guys.
You are the prize, she is not.
It’s a reframing that sounds brutal because it is brutal. But it’s also true. What she did was way more brutal, you aren’t dehumanizing her, you are just finally accepting to see her for who she truly is.
Not the high value woman you once wanted to share your life with, just a broken woman who pretended to, and tricked you into believing it.
It is surrender to the reality and accepting that person for who she is. You can’t change her. You can still love her and have a bunch of pity to her.
But she shown her true colors and that’s not what you wanted or what she promised you she was.
She might still someday become that woman. From all you say she isn’t just yet.
But no matter how much you desire to see her rise to her true potential, the spark you saw inside of her, you can’t love her into reaching it. It must come from within her, only she has the power to flourish, if she has the wants.
Best you can do is surrender and accept her for who she is now.
And magically, your nerve system will relax, and all the clouds dissolves.
You won’t be thinking about infidelity unless intentionally going there.
And that’s a really good place to be.
Your center.