Everything you describe and more is "normal" for where you are at in recovery. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us, one of the most important lessons I have learned is to live for the moment. Even at four years plus, I still can find that difficult at times. I have to step back from situations and remind myself of that lesson.
In the grand scheme of life, most of us have dreams and goals that we aspire to. Any of those dreams or goals that we attain give us a sense of accomplishment. Take one of your successes, one of your dreams or goals that you have attained in the past and carefully analyze it.
Regardless of the planning and effort you put into it, once you reached it, did you reach it step by step as you had originally planned? I would be willing to bet that you didn't.
I look back and realize for the goals I have attained I didn't get to the goal at all as I had planned. Yes, in general I reached the goal with a plan in mind, but I also realize that had I not been willing to compromise along the way, I wouldn't have succeeded in attaining my goal.
If we "plan" our lives, if we reach our goals step by step as we planned to reach the goal, then in all honesty reaching that goal was a "static" process. Life is about change, about being dynamic in responding to situations.
Another lesson that my wife's affairs have taught me, one that I still have problems with is patience. None of us wants to walk through the pain, the emptiness, and the torture of recovery. But there are no shortcuts, if you take a shortcut in recovery, you will wake up one day and find yourself seemingly right back where you started from.
It all takes time, give yourself the time to heal yourself first, give your wife the time to heal herself. Both of you need to be healed and strong to truly heal your relationship. That doesn't mean you won't have to or can't take baby steps on the relationship while you are concentrating on yourselve's, but overall you have to find peace for yourself before you can find peace in the relationship.
One of the hardest things to accept is that your past relationship is DEAD. The affair killed all that you once thought you had, and sadly, now you are having to rediscover trust, love, and how to have dreams again.
The secret I think is to take it one moment at a time, one day at a time, much like recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. It all boils down to baby steps, no great leaps or bounds.
I hope this helps, I remember being where you now find yourslef and someone would write something like this and I would have a hard time accepting that I had to go through baby steps...I mean at the time I was 50, and have life experience, I thought I could speed up the recovery, and had to learn that there is no magic fix, no miracles, but simply hard work, hard work on myself.
Brian,
I feel all of those things.
But I also feel SHAME.
An A. leaves so many wounded souls.
I am thinking of you and Squeakers often.
Sometimes instead of constantly fixating or obsessing, do a physical activity or exercise to give your soul a "mini" break.
Bless you!!!
We don't brand you with a scarlet "A" around here. We're trying to make it safe for you to get things out, to figure things out, to grow and to change.
Shame is like anger. It has a purpose; it shows us what's not working right in our lives. You have to recognize it and feel it in order to change what's not working...the emotion itself can provide you with the motivation to change.
But beware of getting stuck there. From years of people sharing their stories, I think BS often get stuck in anger (I did). From the more limited sharings of WS, I've sensed that WS either get stuck in shame or try to hide from it. Neither is good.
It points out one ironclad rule of life: Deal with it, and move on. That definitely does NOT mean to hide from your feelings or deny them. It does mean you have to live through them and use them to change your life in the necessary ways.
It may take years, but it's what we've got to do. The people I know who are happy can do just that.
Deal with it, and move on, and give yourself permission to be less than perfect in doing so.
Brian - I know how much I hated to hear that what I was feeling was "normal" - but what you're feeling is normal! I wanted to feel GOOD. I wanted to feel WHOLE. I wanted to feel HEALED... not normal. What is normal, anyway?! My normal yardstick doesn't even pretend to look like what it used to.
Just focus on what needs tending to at this very second. Take care of what you can, first, and trust that the rest will either take care of itself or will wait on you to take care of it. I had to set some pretty stringent priorities, early on. I had to take care of ME - eating, sleeping, stress walking, accepting support - things like that, just to function again. At work, I had to make piles of things that had to be taken care of ASAP and things that could wait. It is a juggling act, for sure.
Laurie - Mini breaks are wonderful. I walked about 5 miles a day early in my recovery. Another day, I rearranged my bedroom and bought new curtains, put the quilt on my bed that I was saving for a special occasion, cleaned out drawers, etc. Anything to keep busy and make myself stop obsessing. During quiet times, I used to MAKE myself think of other things... mindless trivia, silly things like every address and phone number I'd ever had, every song on some old CD, lines from my favorite movies, things like that. Writing in a journal helped me tremendously. I could ramble on for days and no one was there saying "Get over it! Stop obsessing!" Reading it now, I said the same thoughts, worded slightly different, over and over... but somehow, I always felt better afterwards.
I wish you both peace!
Monica
My yesterdays are all boxed up - and neatly put away.
I can easily beat myself up and feel sorry for myself....
However, I only need to look around and see people fighting battles that they most likely won't win. I work with a nurse who has valiantly battled breast cancer for 10 years. She just wants to make it until her daughter gets married in October.
In the middle of my muddle, I passed her in the hallway at work....she with her walker (she is 48) and her wig and pale skin....she showed up to put a few hours in.
I say "You go girl".
It's the least I can do!
May God bless her. Everything is relative isnt it. I just saw a blind man with a cane where I work, I went into the bathroom and closed my eyes just long enough to not know where I was standing. He lives like that every day and night. I am blessed too....
