I feel so uneasy right now. I think of the A and things about the A constantly. It feels like if my mind is not truly occupied with something specific then the A is what I think of. Sometimes it grabs a hold of me, I tail spin and get very upset and times like now I am not upset but it’s on my mind and I feel very bothered by it. Ugh, the knowledge of the A feels like a life sentence. Like a dark cloud that just follows me around. I now constantly have bad thoughts and visions, things that you should never have to picture of even think of about your wife and it breaks my heart that I do. I now struggle daily with lack of trust, thoughts of the A, insacurtites it has caused me and all the other ripple effects of the A and I can’t help but think...how UNFAIR

It is so hard to keep the images and thoughts out...

Furthermore I find it compounds with a desire to "overwrite" them. I continually compare the M to the A and so many things are direct copies of us in our happy times. I just want to overwrite them with new experiances, that shaddow the A.

Clearly (or maybe not? Its not what I want...) when you are healing things like sex life and intimacy are hard to come by, but I often long to be able to have those things that he had. Its so unfair that he got to sleep with my wife and now I don't

I often wonder if the images would be easier if they didn't also bring jealousy. I know they will always hurt, but at the moment I'm jealous of them as well. Even though I know its only months, its so hard to remember "us" intimately and so vivid to remember "them".



You are not alone.

One question... Do you find asking about it, talking about it with her helps or makes things worse? Right after D-Day I asked and found out lots of gory details, and so I can do quite well in my mind, but the places I haven't asked about I create images for anyway... I'm never sure if I should leave well alone or ask about the remaining bits I don't know.

Adam, I know that hearing the details was very very hard for me and those thoughts now haunt me but I needed to know. I think knowing the details is very important for the healing in many ways. 1) I would have always wondered what transpired if I did not ask and maybe I would have imagined more and worse things than what actually happened. 2) By knowing everything (as horrible as it is) I now at least know everything that is to know and don’t fear any more surprises because new information would not only open the wound but also be an indication that she is still hiding things which would further damage my trust. 3) Now that I know everything I can’t start to process it and hopefully get past it one day. They say it’s like a movie that you should allow to play over and over, eventually you will get tired of it. 4) It showed me that my W was willing to completely come clean, own up to what she did that she is truly honest because I know it hurt her to tell me the details, knowing it hurt me but she did it because i asked her and she is honest now.

That being said it doesn’t take away the fact that I hate having these thoughts and visions and words cannot even describe how horrible it is to me to experience them. I pray that people are right when they say that it will fade with time.

I just want you to know you are among kindred spirits here. I have had the same obsessive thoughts that bring a knot to my stomach. Especially when I have to drive past her old apartment, which usually happens several times a day. There's just no escape from the mental pictures that arise.

Over the years, this has caused resentment in me as well as pain. I truly hope you do better with somehow resolving your feelings than I have done.
BB

Is if you split up and go your seperate ways does that stop the images? You see when they are really bad my instinct is that it isn't worth staying. But in more lucid times I wonder if even then they wouldn't still haunt me - that I wouldn't transfer them onto anyone else I met and fell in love with.

Perhaps there is no option but to suffer them.

Well, Adam, everyone is different. The opposite of love is not hate--it's apathy.

I was cheated on by my first real girlfriend (not my W). It hurt real bad at the time! We broke up. Once I stopped caring about her, I no longer felt anything at all about her cheating--the images stopped because I simply moved on over time.

It's different when the BS decides to stay, because they have to deal with the source of their anguish every day.

But there are no pat answers. It's not like an electric switch we can just flip off. Some people are so traumatized by the A that they never really shake it off; others can move on and leave in dustbin of history.
BB

I know what you mean. I think me deciding to stay is why I struggle and why I feel I experience the torment of these images and thoughts. I decided to stay because I love my W, and what to give our marriage a second change and I want to live up to my vows (for better or worse) but it’s because I care and because I love her so much that this hurts so much. I am sure if I did not care about her, these thoughts and images would have no effect. Why would they? I still think of her as my loving wife, my angel, my one and only and that’s why, picturing her with someone else absolutely makes me sick and breaks my heart into pieces to say the least. Like a said, I hope I am one of those people that can put it in the past because all I want is for us (me) to be happy again and for me not to feel this

Sorry that you are feeling so down. It takes time is all I can say. Images will fade. It happened to me. I ran them so much in my head. But the more I ran them, the less effect they had on me. My WH had an affair with a co-worker whom he still works with. D-day for me was about 16 months ago ( I stopped counting sometime after d-day anniversary).

We went through A LOT OF ups and downs. It was very hard for me to deal with the hurt and the feeling of unfairness. I was totally trustful of him before the A. The good thing was WH was remorseful and persistant in keeping the marriage together. He kept every promise and set up his own boundaries (regarding working with OW).

Even at one year point, I was still mad/sad/crazy. You name it. Good days were over-shadowed by bad days. At 14 monthes H and I were able to connect rationally but I was still feeling emotionally void. I was thinking we were nothing more than good parenting partners.

Now I can honestly say we are beginning to connect emotionally. I enjoy the moments together instead of trying to compare. Triggers are still present but they are managable.

It is a very long and bumpy road. I no longer believe in fairy tales but I do have hopes for happy endings.


Best wishes to you! Each of us have to fight the battles that we think are worth fighting for.


~Phoebe

Phoebe, I am at 5+ months and my W also works with OP. Isn't it just the worse? How do you cope? I really have to take it day by day and somehow I get through it but it's torture. I hate every second of it and can't wait for the day she gets another job. Like I said before, I know things won't be magically fixed when she does but it would be a huge step forward in my healing. Any insight on how you deal with it would be appreciated.

Hello everyone,

My exfiance cancelled his trip today, why I didnt know exactly. But he called me out to the job site today to talk. I went.

The fact is he wanted to let me know in person that the OW had called him this am to let him know that she needed $1000.00 in cash today or she was going to call me and let me know everything. We run a business together and this man wants to pay her the money. I flat out said NO!
Interesting isnt it?

1.) If he had nothing to hide then nothing she could say would even be relevant.

2.) Lies, deceit, continues for some long after the affair is over....or is it??

3.) It still cuts you to your core in pain even when YOU have declared it over.

The hell continues while I await her call.

Please forgive me all its 5:15pm here and the vodka is kicking in.

O

Sorry you're feeling down. A year almost for me and I still get some gut-renching moments, especially when she's somewhere else.

Most of the boundaries we agreed after D-Day were broken within months. I think most have stuck since Dec now but I know she still lies to me.

I think the re-running of the movie thing doesn't work well for me. The main A was years ago and right under my nose, in my house, but I just forced myself to believe she was true. This means old forgoten simple memories come back and NOW I understand why this or that happened, or why she said something strange. The movie alters a bit as I remember more.

It's just plain horrible and makes me feel sick. Sorry you're going through it, sorry we're all going through it. Personally I just want it to stop.

I'm coming to the idea that I will get over her before I will get over the As. I know I don't love her the way I used to - it's like love without trust. I sometimes feel when I am close to her that I am being disloyal to myself if that makes sense.

I hope it gets better for you soon.

That sounds hauntingly familiar - the right under the nose.

Its odd that WW seem to trick the BS into "accepting" the affair while it goes on under their nose, convincing/manipulating the BS into believing it isn't going on, to the extent in my case that I even encouraged the friendship at times!!

Where as the WH seems to be a more secretive, hidden, keeping the two "lives" separate and out of contact.

Not a statistical sample, but just how it was starting to sound.

Could just be the circumstances, too, as there have been folks here before whose husband conducted the A right under the BS' nose.

ff

edited for clarity

Hi Hartbroken,

My family just came back from a weekend camping trip (building new memories).

Coping was hard but eventually got easier. I can honestly tell you at 5/6 months I was not coping well at all. At times I just told my kids to play in the backyard while I crawled into bed to cry. WH and I talked A LOT and fought quite often. I read a lot of books and on HH.

Now I don’t feel like I am coping anymore. H and I are able to talk about A in perspective and reflect on how we handled the whole mess. Triggers are still present but they don’t hurt as much.

Thinking back there were several things that helped:

We talked and talked and talked. My H was/is not a big talker but he was there every time I vented or had questions for him. He said I analyzed the affair to death. But that’s how I processed it.

Among all, coping with H working with OW was the hardest since he worked/works very closely with OW.

“ I really have to take it day by day and somehow I get through it but it's torture. I hate every second of it and can't wait for the day she gets another job. “ I can soooo relate to it.

Keeping a journal helped me tremendously. It was a great emotional outlet. For what I did not want to scream to my H in his face, I wrote it down and let my emotion out. (As much as I agree with Ami that we need to bleed, we can only bleed so much onto our spouse without causing permanent scars.) The journal especially helped when I had moments of rage and bad images and doubt thinking about H with OW side by side. As for the images, one day I just told OW in the movie to "go away. don't take up any of my time anymore".

Very early on I knew I had a choice. I knew I did not have to stay with my H. 3 days after d-day I made plan of making sure I would be able to have an independent life without him. I put the finance together and made sure my kids’ schooling or other routines would not be disturbed even if we got a divorce. I never had to put that plan in use but it allowed me to be sure that I stayed with him because of love, not because of necessity.

Another thinking that helped me was I tried to mentally list my H’s good qualities when I had bad moments. He is a good father and has many other nice qualities. I don’t know if it makes sense, I would tell myself while he was bad in some areas, he was good in others. I read a lot on affair recovery. I would tell myself if my H and I could have many many years of good marriage, 2 years of recovery was perhaps bearable. (But it was easier said than done. We went through hell!!!)

I selectively told friends and family. Every situation is different. I remember you mentioned you have not told family but it would not work for me. I told my brother but not my parents, and a few close friends. H told his family. It was a great relief for me to be able to talk to other people in the open. The secrecy suffocated me. I also got different perspectives talking to different people. I was amazed that many of my friends’ lives were touched by affairs. My close friend reviewed to me she was OW many years ago and talked about how it affected her and her self-image. She regretted all these years.

Action of my H helped. H was consistent and kept all his promises after he came out of the fog. He was instrumental in planning new memories. They might be small distractions: suggesting new things to do, exercise together, going for walks. One big new memory for us was we put our house on the market and looked for a new place to live. It kept me busy for months. We had to plan things together so our talks were not always affair saturated. I know you bought new rings. It’s a very nice new memory . Maybe take a class together. Pick up a new interest together. Having some common topics to talk about other than the affair.

It was tough. I remember I just wanted to just go to sleep and hoped that when I woke up everything would go away. It did not. But I am still here and my marriage is actually getting better. I hope it gets more bearable and better for you!!!!




~Phoebe