It is almost 5 weeks since d-day. The past few weeks I have been a lot better. I have controlled my emotions, had a couple good talks with the W, we went on a date, etc. I'm still not eating that much or working out, but overall, I have been better. I thought I had myself trained to get the bad thoughts of the A out of my mind when they were creeping in. But for the last 3 days, I have been mad. No, not mad. PISSED OFF. ANGRY. For some reason, I cannot shake the idea of her A from my mind, and there is one specific sexual thing they did one nite that I found out about that I can't get out of my head. I'm not yelling or screaming at the W, but she can tell my attitude has changed. She is trying to be supportive in her own little way, but damn, I AM PISSED. I slept on the couch last nite because I could not be in the same bed as her and I did not want to fight. Can anyone tell me why this is coming back now, will it keep coming back, how can I let it go?
It keeps coming back for me also, I have read and understand how the WS feels but why is it that they will not put the same energy into making us feel good again as they put into their A. My W was hitting the gym everyday always in a great mood, now she just mopes around the house saying she can't understand why I just can't move on. I mean how about trying to win my affection back, it has been 10 months now and the only solution I see is accept it or get out. I know I am going to stay and accept it, but that does not mean that it does not still suck.
Mike i know how you feel but i can't tell when or if it ever gets better. My D-Day was 7 months ago and i'm still getting angry alot. I went from being depresssed all the time to being angry most of the time.The thoughts never leave my mine . It is really hard!! I want to beleive and trust my H again but i don't have a time line for that. I hope it does happen someday.
Being angry is our right, don't think you are wrong for being angry , they made us this way.They need to understand our feelings. I wish you the best , if you ever figure this whole mess out let me know the secret!
Kathy
Mike, it will keep coming back for a while, and at some very unexpected times. It's unfortunate, but it's part of the process.
My advice? Get back into working out. Physical work is VERY good for helping ease down the anger. It will still be there, but at least you can get out some of that pent up emotion through working out.
In the very early stage that you're in, that anger is your psyche's defense mechanism. Your subconscious is saying, "Okay, we get pissed, or we kill someone". That anger is building a defensive wall around your subconscious to keep you from going off the deep end. It's a natural, and unfortunately somewhat necessary, reaction.
The danger here is if you let your anger take over. It's okay to get pissed, just don't let it get out of control, which brings us back to working out.
The day after D-Day, I went to the YMCA. I literally split a heaving punching bag open with a turning back kick. My first thought was, "What kind of damage would that have done if I hit a PERSON like that?" It scared the hell out of me.
Being a martial artist, I tend to view life from the standpoint of fighting. And make no mistake, life IS a fight. In the case of the A, I was fighting to save my marriage. My first instructor once gave me some very smart advice concerning anger in a fight:
"Anger is the REAL enemy. The second you let anger control your thoughts, actions and emotions, you have lost the fight".
I remembered those words after I kicked that bag... And I made a commitment on the spot that I would NOT let my anger take over and lose this fight.
I'm happy to say I succeeded...
Hopefully, you can too...
Cory
Some things in life are problems. Most are inconveniences. Knowing the difference is wisdom.
I still get angry sometimes & it's been 9 months since I put together the last bit of evidence to bust my H. I get angry about several things: the fact that he was stupid enough to do what he did, the fact that I had to snoop for 12 months in order to bust him & the whole time he would look me in the eye & lie to me 4 or 5 times a day.I get mad that our marriage will never be the same , if it survives at all. I get mad that my sex life now sucks(H still enjoys it but I don't). Yes, I think it's easy to get angry with al this A mess.I still yell at my H sometimes but He has been very understanding about it & says he deserves it & that I have every right to feel the way I feel.I don't get out of hand angry like I did at first though.So, I guess it's getting better.
I am mad at everything. Everything little thing is a trigger at this point. When I get mad, she gets mad. She has started to try and not get mad back at me and if she does, she will apologize for not handling it the right way. But right now, I cannot let it go. Every part of me is tense and wants to kill someone/something (ok - just an expression - I'm not going to do anything stupid). Why the f*** does it affect me 10x more than her? Sorry - still venting
""""Why the f*** does it affect me 10x more than her?""""
Because she knows exactly what happened and what it meant etc, you don't and never will.
Mike I was pissed for more than 3 1/2 years. I mean pissed off. I understand your rage. I honestly don't know why I'm not in jail. I guess I just kept thinking about setting an example for my sons and missing my grandkids.
My wife of 31 years had an affair with a guy at work who had been married 32 years at the time. At that point in our lives I thought we were home free from any of this crap.
I sought out different counselors to deal just with my anger and found no real relief. I can tell you that it will eventually subside, but when is tough to say.
How do I let go of the anger though? I will get back in the gym, but what else? And how can I start to quit focusing on this 24/7? I need to save my marraige. I am driving my wife nuts b/c it is all I can think about, all I ever want to talk about. I am not making any excuses for her, but I know I am killing her by beating her up everday. Last week, I was doing good. This week, I am going in sane.
Hi Mike! Sorry to hear you're having a hard time. I have found that I don't have much luck controlling my thoughts & feelings about the A. I have good days & bad days. Some of the bad times last for weeks.I understand this now & just go with it. I am still in shock over what my H did & how are lives have changed.I still don't know if I'm staying or going but I know I will survive either way.It's just hard to deal with the fact that the person I loved & trusted the most has betrayed me & can't really be trusted or relyed on. I don't really have a partner in life anymore. I have a person that is my H because of a piece of paper we signed at the courthouse a long time ago.Maybe my feelings on all of this will change later but that is how I feel now.Mike, Maybe whne you are angry you need to go off & do something for yourself . Put some physical distance between you & your W for a few hrs. I like going to the movies when I get free time.
Go back and re-read what H2C wrote. Some of us get and stay pissed off for a long time. Some of us (like me) eventually drive our wives away with our anger.
It is a STAGE of recovery, don't get stuck there.
How to beat it?
First, the psychs tell us that anger isn't a "primary" emotion. It's a signal that something else is bothering us. (Well, duh...betrayal hurts.)
Look behind your anger to see if it's pain, fear, outright hatred, or something else driving it. Then try to work through the root cause.
One thing that sometimes happens to people: living in the anger. If you're living there and stirring yourself up with recurrent thoughts, perhaps a "cognitive behavioral" technique will help.
The one that worked for me with anxious/angry thoughts (since they came mostly when I was alone, driving) was the STOP! technique: when intrusive thoughts start running you around in circles and making you anxious or angry, recognize that it's happening and tell yourself OUT LOUD "STOP!" and try to think of something else, preferably something pleasant.
It sounds goofy but it worked for me. Another participant on the boards used a rubber band on her wrist that she snapped when the thoughts started coming.
Mike, your healing is going to take a long time. If you are like me, you were maturely in deep love with your wife when she had the affair. That takes a long time to get over. What you are going thru right now at 5 weeks is perfectly normal. Your wife, if she truely loves you, will have to endure it since she is the one that caused it. If she doesn't love you enough to endure it then you and her have some decisions to make down the road.
I reached a point where I didn't really care if my wife left or not. But she chose to stay and fight for our marriage for which I'm grateful. I chose, daily, to stay. That's how you must muddle thru this, one day at a time.
Like you, I obsessed about my wife's affair constantly. It was the last thing on my mind before I fell asleep (when I was able to start sleeping again) and it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up. I did that for over a year. I wanted to talk about it all the time. I just couldn't get enough answers. I still can't get all the answers to some things and I don't think I ever will. You and I have to find a way to just accept that.
I suspect that your wife, like mine, just wants things to get back to normal. Well guess what, normal just disentergrated when she had sex with the other guy because that level of trauma to her spouse isn't normal. You and her will have to redefine "normal" and that will take a long time. For the next couple of years, normal will be talking and obsessing about the affair for you. For her it will be just get over it already.
The anger got so bad for me that my wife reacted with Newton's Third Law of Motion...every action had an equal and opposite reaction. You mention that your wife is already starting to do that. But good for her for trying to correct it. My wife did too, at first. It got to where my anger enveloped me, and no matter what she did to try and make things better at first, it still wasn't good enough for me. Eventually, she became so resentful and so tired of hearing my pain that it turned into one big blameshifting, hateful mess and we couldn't pull ourselves out of it. Divorce papers were filed and the house was days away from being listed.
How do you get out of that anger? That's the $64,000.00 Question. At the stage you are in, the emotions are still extremely raw. You are still in shock, and there is no possible way on earth she will be able to understand just how hurt you are no matter how much you want her to. The secret here is, you need to realize that and know that you will never, ever MAKE her understand it. I know...that pisses you off more, but it's the reality. On this forum you'll hear a lot about how you can't control another person no matter how hard you try, and even more about letting go of the thought that you can. You will understand that eventually. It's a foreign concept for you at this point, but you'll get it.
Don't deny your anger, your pain, or your sadness. Just don't let them control the way you react to any given situation with your wife at this point. Don't let them divert you from trying to heal and trying to work things out with your wife, or it will result in the opposite effect. The thought stopping techniques that Chris mentioned really do work. You have to recognize the spider web that your brain begins to create...this thought shooting off into another, then another comes in until you've worked yourself up into a frenzy of agony. Stay in the now as much as you possibly can, and stop the spider-webbing with anything that works (except alcohol or drugs...stay as far away from those as humanly possible, especially now!).
If you are like me, when that anger grabs hold of you, it physically takes any reasonable thought process away from you and it builds on itself. Sometimes, I would even be surprised at myself for getting so unbelievably angry at the slightest thing. You want answers and you want them now. You're pissed at everything that isn't right to you, because everything you thought was right has been turned upside down. You really need to be cognizant of when this starts to happen and stop it as best you can. The volatility will subside eventually, but you can't create more damage in the meantime, like I did. Yes, it will keep coming back, constantly...there's no getting around that. You will be able to control it much better as the freshness of the open wound starts to close up a bit.
What helped me? I guess it was - with the help of IC (a little), and the realization that I was just about to divorce (which I didn't really want to do), then getting help through a program called Retrouvaille, which you'll find explained in detail on my post in the Open Forum - me coming to the realization that I truly loved my wife and I had to stay focused on communicating properly with her, listening to her so she could in turn listen to me, stop attacking her with her horrible mistake (and bitter, hateful words), and make the decision to love her instead of hating her for what she had done.
The one HUGE thing my IC told me - which I wasn't ready to hear at the time, and you may not be ready yet either - was to cherish her as much as I can right now. I questioned that, thinking to myself that - even though I still love her, or what she was - I HATE her for what she's done. How in the world could I cherish her? He was trying to get me to understand that 1) That was truly what I wanted, 2) That was truly what she NEEDED, and 3) By doing that - making the decision to love her - it would open the door to more loving, less hateful behavior for the both of us.
Proper communication is the key to keeping everything together, so you don't get to the "Just get over it!" phase for her that H2C talks about, and will ease your obsessing to a degree. If you can listen and be heard without wanting to spit bile at each other, it will go a LONG way in all three recoveries (Yours, Hers and the Marriage's). Sitting down with her, look each other in the eyes and speaking to each other in a non-threatening manner - and truly HEAR what each other has to say...process the feelings and try to understand them without judging them. That will create a safe environment for each of you to work through this. Try that before you let the anger kick into high gear. If you let that anger go too far, she won't ever feel safe to tell you what you want to hear. Trust me on this, you don't want that.
Just know that you are right to be angry, but if you hold onto it and let it dictate your actions, it will lead you down a path that you don't want to travel. Time is your enemy right now, because time will help ease your anger. It's a four letter word that all of us BS's hate, because it does us no good RIGHT NOW when we need help the most. Hopefully you'll be able to process some of the advice you're getting on this forum to help you in less time. If you let your logical side kick in and really listen to what the folks here are telling you, it may come faster.
Tell me about it! I get thoughts out the waaaazooo! Sometimes I just want to scream, but of course I can't!! I gotta keep living a normal life for my kids, myself, and normalcy yet I gotta carry this damn A thing with me every where I go. I can say that information in the long run will help you to step back (third person style) and see the big picture. My movie is apparently still running so my advice or support is limited at best. I tried the bottle but as a bud of mine said" you can't drown those sorrows---they just swim back to the top!"
I feel anger too, but when I really look into it the anger is more of an expression than a state of being. I'm angry he thought so little of me. I'm angry that my warnings to him weren't headed. I'm angry that I married someone who could be so cruel.
And oddly enough, I'm angry at anger. I think, for me, where this all came from was his anger. His anger at life allowed him to set up the lie that I didn't matter. That because I was an insensitive person who didn't understand him he had every right to look for "happiness". The angry household he was raised in taught him that's it's ok to rollover people before they roll over you. For some people, for my husband, there are a total of three legitimate emotions: love, sadness and anger. The OW and on-line stuff was his love. What got him there was his anger, and now its all about the sadness.
I miss seeing him the way I used to. I miss believing in our future. I miss our dreams, our love, our laughing. Some days he tries, some days he doesn't. Maybe what's happened to me is different that most people here, but I see his A as another form of emotional abuse. It's another way his anger acted out to show that I/we just don't really matter.
I'm angry that I have to rebuild what I did not tear down. With or without him, I have to rebuild.
