SurvivingInfidelity.com Forum Archives

libertyrocks posted 4/25/2013 09:38 AM

Just curious if your feelings for WS have changed with time?? How are all of you doing?? Do you feel more love and/or trust in your heart for WS after a significant amount of time. Hugs to all those, and kudos to those who have stuck it out with WS.

I still have extremely highs and lows. It's terrible. I almost feel bad for WS because of my extreme mood swings. It sucks.

rachelc posted 4/25/2013 09:45 AM

((libertyrocks)) you have a lot to recover from...
I'm a year out. I trust him a little more, me a LOT more but I won't say we're recovered, at all.
UO once said it takes a year just to get out of the fetal position and I believe it.
I don't love him like I used to. I don't want this as part of my marital history.
But I'm sticking it out for a while as I work on myself.
Good luck! I hope he gets himself a good IC!

hurting7897 posted 4/25/2013 09:52 AM

We aren't doing well. We had a few months of doing well and now it's taken a real spiral downward. He's pushing for my forgiveness and wants me to put the past behind me and I just can't and won't. I'm not ready yet. I've got so much to process and yes, I've come a long way, and he has to, he's doing everything right BUT it is a real mind-f**k to be cheated on (and lied to for so many years). I still feel very very angry. I don't know where we're going to go from here.

karmahappens posted 4/25/2013 09:52 AM

Liberty,

One year out I was still bat-shit crazy....

We are almost 6 years out from dday and doing wonderfully.

You have so many ddays and so much healing to do. I don't know where I would be after taking so many blows.

You have a strength ..... hang onto it.

LivinginLimbo posted 4/25/2013 10:01 AM

At the year mark, the reality of it hit hard. This really happened, this really is my life.

I don't think we'd have made it this far without MC. We've both benefitted from it. I'm at the point where I'm cautiously optimistic.

When you start to feel bad for your WS, remind yourself that he's the reason you feel the way you do. You have to make yourself a priority now.

MoreWould posted 4/25/2013 15:25 PM

We're 35 years out and it's Real Good, but I got triggered into a wicked flashback recently W helped me through. So, it never goes back to where it was. Too much water under the bridge.

In those olden years near DDay we didn't have SI to help us through the process, and it took 5 long, hard years before the fact of FWW's A didn't affect my thinking on a regular basis.

It's a long, long road.

Searchingforhope posted 4/25/2013 16:06 PM

hi liberty..

Today IS the 1 year Dday anniversary for me. Whoopie.

Just curious if your feelings for WS have changed with time

^^^Feelings have changed. I am less angry. The anger phase really did hit me about 6 months after dday. It was scary. Didn't know if it would change. But it did. What really got me was when I was so angry at him I hit him a few times with a pillow. I know that may not sound like a big deal, but to me it was violent...and I hated my actions. I was so remorseful. I felt like I had degraded him. I apologized profusely. H said things like, "It didn't even hurt." and "I did so much worse to you." Whenever I feel angry, I think about that time and try to get my emotions under control. I don't want to repeat that..ever.

Do you feel more love and/or trust in your heart for WS after a significant amount of time.

Yes yes Yes. Thank God. I have to give my H the credit for that. He is trying to make it right. It will never be 100% right..but the fact that he is trying makes up for that.

I still have extremely highs and lows. It's terrible. I almost feel bad for WS because of my extreme mood swings

I know what you mean. I think this is normal, unfortunately. I still have sad days. My H gets very discouraged when I have a sad day. I told him that I was there for him during tough times in his life, and now it's his turn to be there for me. It's difficult for him because he knows it's his actions that caused my "tough time."

But I also have good days where I feel optimistic. I hope to have more and more of those. I think I am.

Look...Here I am 1 year to the day...and I'm still standing. I thought today would be a terrible day for me, but I keep telling myself "It's just another day. Don't give it power."

(((hugs back to you, liberty)))

I hope we all get through this.

manybrokenpieces posted 4/25/2013 22:08 PM

Ddayversary was April 12. Just remembering the insanity of the first few months post dday is mind blowing! From uncontrollable shakes, panic attacks, sleeplessness, uncontrollable crying, anxiety, insecurity, body image decimation, depression, fixation on minute details, incessent detective work, replaying every moment of our entire marriage, rewriting my personal history, rage, irrational
rage, hatred, frustration, and more-repeatedly-I am glad to say things are better.
I have worked through my body image issues and think I am back to pre-A normal for me. The rage has subsided and I think it may be for good this time. The insecurities and anxieties are still there--the seemingly unshakeable side effects of such blatant destruction of trust. Sadness seems to sneak in still yet.
But there are happy, comfortable, loving and enjoyable days and weeks and the Bad days are fewer and further between.
All and all, i am doing far better than I ever would have imagined, but I know I will never fully recover. I will carry the scar of this trauma for the rest of my life, but I would do that with or without my marriage. I choose to do it with my marriage.

lovehurtstomuch posted 4/25/2013 23:53 PM

The love I have now for my WH is not the same. Before, I thought he was my soulmate. There were days where I felt I could melt inside of him, become one. Now, Im scared. Scared to keep loving him, afraid of getting hurt again. There must be something there though, I miss him when he is gone. I yearn to talk to him. I wonder what he's thinking all the time.

Im up and down alot too, hopefully its gets better by yr 2.

May 11th was my d-day.

VD2012 posted 4/26/2013 01:06 AM

I'm a year and a week out. We just got through our "affair season" and all relevant dates with regards to my wife's infidelity.

First I just wanted to say I'm at peace with myself more than anything. I've found solace within my strength of will and a permanence in my continued resilience to life's obstacles. Nothing else has broken me in life and my wife hasn't either. I've definitely been devastated by what she did and still carry on with lingering problems as a result, but in the grand scheme of things I'm happy with myself in life. Couldn't ask for more right now honestly. I plan to continue on my path with healing and will enjoy the fruits of life that I'll reap as a result.

I've spent the past year focused primarily on my self with a secondary focus on seeing if my wife would make the changes necessary to make me feel safe staying with her.

When it comes to her... Well, I absolutely love her. Likely beyond sense. Do I love her more or less? Can't answer. It's not quantifiable for me. I simply love her. She's my everything, always has been, still is, and likely (hopefully) always will be. I don't love her in the same way as I used to though. The innocence of our relationship is gone. There's a very sobering reality to our relationship now. I have to admit my love for her previously was a very codependent immature and unhealthy love. Now, it's a much more real, mature and healthy love. In many ways I like it better this way and am sure time will only strengthen that feeling.

As for trust, that's a tricky subject. On one hand I trust her more than I ever have, because my understanding of trust and what I hold her to is much more realistic and measured with transparency and accountability on her part. On the other, she practically went nuts for no sensible reason and cheated on me. Hard to trust someone after that. There has only been one misstep on her part regarding trust, which was about a month ago. Otherwise she's been phenomenal at rebuilding what she destroyed. But I'm still incredibly leery of her. She understands and we work forward with that understanding. That said my wife had one of the more honest and somewhat in your face affairs I've seen. It's really just... a work in progress. Best way to put it is I trust what I see and my wife makes sure I can see everything.

My wife's remorse and desire to change herself have been tremendous boons in my healing and feeling safe. My own healing likely would be as is without her, but our relationship has survived and in many ways begun to thrive because of her work on herself. She's a drastically improved person in so many ways and she's still awesome to me.

All that said. Despite the improved relationship, my sense of peace, and her betterment, I would say overall I'm sad. This shit is hard. This shit is stressful. This shit kicks the every living hell out of you in a way that at times can feel crippling. And for way too long it felt downright overwhelming. Only in the past couple months have I found myself settling back into a normal life. Which proves to be tricky itself, having been so deeply entrenched in "fixing" things and absorbed by the affair for what seems like a long time. I do find many things to be happy about in life and enjoy plenty of great days and even have a lot of good memories from the past year. Yet, I'm sad. It's improving with time and the continued efforts from both of us but I'm currently generally just sad.

A couple days ago we were sitting outside on a bench enjoying the nice weather while we watched our daughter run around with a stick shooting at alien bees that were invading. It was a very pleasant moment, but I couldn't fully enjoy it. I mentioned this to my wife and she apologized for causing me to feel like this. A consequence of her self destructive decisions. With time I hope this feeling diminishes.

I'm in no rush though. It'll come with time and work.

For us, at a year out life is pretty good but there's still the continued need for work and effort. Which really is how it will always be for us from now on. I see it said by many that year 2 can be worse, but I don't believe that will be the case for me. In a year (or perhaps 2 - though I doubt that) I think I will have recovered from what my wife did to me. By then I hope our relationship will be stronger and more fulfilling, I hope to be happier with myself and life, and I hope she too is happier with herself and continues growing.

All said, I'm hopeful.

I hope my post has helped answer your questions or proved useful, though I feel I've rambled.

libertyrocks posted 4/26/2013 11:51 AM

Thanks for sharing everyone.

VD2012, I feel that same, I love him tremendously!

Daisy312 posted 4/26/2013 15:23 PM

Our 1 yr was the 4/18. R is going well, but I'm not we're I had hoped to be. We have a 4 yr old and 1 yr old though so I don't feel like we have had an actual year. We started MC and it is helping since our MC was once in our position and he successfully Rd. I'm hoping now that we have made a whole year of new memories it will be better, but for now I'm still riding the rollercoaster from ell

UndecidedinMA posted 4/26/2013 17:01 PM

We are about 18 months out. I was the hardest year. The 6 months since the antiversary were very much a RC.

We have been in MC/IC for almost the whole time. Mostly he seemed to want to rush R He made some insensitive remarks, not about me just about As in general.

We have turned a corner but I know we have work ahead but the feelings are back. They are abit changed good & bad but yes I love him.