My d-day was 2/15/07. I feel like I've entered a new phase in the last few days. Up until now, I've been extraordinarily emotional and have tackled so many topics with my former wayward husband. It's been very painful, but even as I went through it all, I had the sense that this was the easy part. The most painful part, but also the easiest part. My husband has been very remorseful for his two one night stands, and supportive of me.
Now I feel like a lot of my emotions are spent. (I'm sure there's more to come, it just feels like I'm over the biggest hump.) I emailed both OW with a sort of cathartic, but non-angry message. I know a lot of people advise against this, but I feel the emails really helped me stop thinking so much about the OW and to not feel so angry towards them. I feel like they're both out of my emotional picture now. With these non-issues out of the way, I can concentrate on me, my H, our marriage and recovery.
Since yesterday I've been feeling exhausted (mentally and emotionally) and empty. I feel like I'm coming out of some kind of fog - an orgy of overwhelming emotion that completely occupied me. Now I'm sort of looking around and thinking, "what next?" In a way, I'm grateful, because I now have at least some ability to look at my supportive H and see his pain and his needs. But I just have no idea where to go from here. My own emotions and my own needs and wants provided a sort of roadmap for the first month or so. Now that all the most critical issues have been addressed, and I don't feel like I'm constantly hemorrhaging emotionally, I don't know what to do. We've felt very close emotionally this last month. It's a good start to recovery, but where do we go from here?
We've just started MC. But H travels about half the time for work, so we don't have appointments all that often. I've been reading After the Affair, and now that I'm past the first few chapters, it seems moderately useful. I've requested Not Just Friends through the inter-library loan system at our local library. (Money is REALLY tight for us.)
Is this what everyone goes through at a certain point after d-day? What's next to focus on? I feel like I need some concrete task to occupy me. I can't imagine going on for very long feeling this blah and undirected and grey.
For us, once we dealt with the crisis of the affair and getting out of it, it was dealing with finding the truth about what had occured. I wanted to know a lot of details, and my wife was reluctant to give information. In addition, my wife didn't want to believe that she had an active role in causing the affair (she had been playing victim to avoid responsibility), also making it difficult to find the truth. The other thing was answering my other questions about why, how she allowed it, and then of course processing the hard and hurtful answers.
Another major part of the work after the first few weeks was the on-going work of my wife to be transparent and to rebuild trust. This is one that has continued even until now, but it was important that she started those things as soon as the affair was over. Today she is very careful about the kind of situations she puts herself in, and she tries to let me know when she is going to places during the day while I'm at work.
For me, the affair was a big challenge to the "belief system of my marriage" and I had to re-evaluate all that in the context of the affair. That might have been the biggest task of all.
The next focus is to get yourself healthy...take care of yourself..which you have been doing...find projects that you enjoy doing...doing sudoku puzzles for example. knitting for cancer..art work, volunteer work...then fine time to exercise and laugh.
Heart, has your H looked at why he had the ONS's...after D-day #1 my H told me about his ONS's...he never really looked into why he sought out other women for sex...all was done when he was traveling for business...he justified his reasons with the house was messy, I was heavy ( he even had ONS's when I was a size 9). the problem was with in him, self esteem issues, self confidence..the ONS's continued...just not as many so he says...leading to a full A that lasted a year. D -day 2...this time we went and are still seeing a MC..4 1/2 yrs later we are doing OK...we are in a better place now...we discovered that I could be perfect and he would still have had ONS's. My H found that the Dr Phil book (I think) Self Matters was good for him to read. there are a lot of books out that deal with A's.
I am happy that your H is willing to see the MC...
Heart, it does get better...time passes slowly but time heals,
(((hugs)))
Pat
"Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time."
Thanks for your response, Tom. My H has been forthcoming with all the information I need or want. He confessed to the first ONS after I discovered the second ONS. There's no way I would ever have learned about the first on my own. So I've felt secure in full disclosure at least, for several weeks.
I just feel like we have all the basic requirements in place:
No contact
Full disclosure
Remorse
Willingness to forgive
Both committed to staying in the marriage
Marriage counseling begun
Initial emotional reactions fully expressed and accepted
Sexual intimacy restored
Transparency - I can check up on him
In other words, I think the crisis mode is winding down. I no longer feel completely overwhelmed by my emotions. The obsessive thoughts are receding. I've let go of most of my anger towards OW. And so now I don't really understand what comes next. Obviously, I'm aware that we need to rebuild trust and affair-proof our marriage. I just don't see what the individual steps to that goal are going to be. Most of all, I don't know what work I need to be doing in the process of reconciliation.
Pat, yes, yes, yes! My H has the exact same issues: the need for external validation of his self-worth. He had his ONS's for exactly this reason when he was feeling particularly low and was far away from me. (1st time I was out of the country, second time he was on a business trip to Asia.) The crazy-making part of all of this is that I've seen this so clearly for YEARS. I've tried so many times to impress upon him the importance of dealing with this fundamental issue for his own sake. I've tried supporting him, talking to him, propping him up, being patient, supporting his decision to try meds. Nothing has ever worked. Now this issue has cause huge damage to our marriage and enormous pain to me. It scares the crap out of me that if he hasn't found the resolve or the commitment to address this issue for himself, he won't ever find a way to resolve this for the sake of our marriage.
So like I said, I can see some of the issues that need addressing. Just don't know what I need to focus on next, what may work should be. I feel so spent and grey today.
It maybe that you are in a place that is a lull. I know that at about 3 or 4 months I kind of felt that way. It was like, "Whew!" Got through the worst should be easier from here on in. There was also a sense of accomplishment for having weather such an unbelievable storm. Even with these euphoric feelings I felt like I was all lit up. That is the only way I can think to explain it. Every nerve was on high alert, and there were still butterflies fluttering around in my stomach. I also was still not sleeping well. I wonder if these effects are something you can relate to also.
I would recommend you take it as it comes, don’t expect it to be over but don’t make mountains out of mole hills either. There are more phases to come although no set pattern to them. I suggest you look up the stages of grieve, these will closely follow the stages of infidelity feelings. Somewhere I have them saved, but they would be on my computer at home and I am at work right now. I will try to remember to post them later.
