I did get wound up in a sort of rage spiral for a time. It felt better than being lost and sad. And it might make her more pissed and finally leave, and that's a really reasonable consequence. From what I've read here and experienced however, it's more often a natural phase of mourning the marriage, and an expression of pain and injustice.
Married over 11 years, together for 20.
DD#1: 12/12/10 - LTA of 3 years, 2 mos. DD#2: 02/02/11 - 2 EA/PA with coworkers, a month after the LTA was ended (by OW).
[This message edited by unforgivable5 at 1:20 PM, June 7th (Friday)]
No BS wants to feel the rage, it's terrible. And yes, it often made me think F you, I'm outta here. Hell, I still sometimes feel that way, but normally it's fleeting.
But did the rage make me feel better? No. It's terrible, it's uncontrollable. You don't want to feel it (I mean..you have already committed to trying to R..why would you want to scream and rant at the person you are trying to stay married to).
It's really a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, you are trying to re-build a marriage (if in R)--and on the other..you are so f-ing pissed off at the person who destroyed your world. My wife hurt me more than any person in the world ever has. And yet there I was trying to love her and feel safe with her. It's a real mind-bender.
As far as how does it heal? No clue. During the initial phase after Dday, I was super controlled with my emotions, stuffed everything down so that I could do immediate triage. Some time rolled by, and I found myself less able to control the pain..so it manifests as anger and rage. Maybe it helps you heal by forcing you to examine your emotions and by releasing some of the pain.
Either way, anger and rage sucks for both the BS and Wayward.
[This message edited by wonderboy at 1:29 PM, June 7th (Friday)]
She needs you to get it. That is how it makes her feel better. And every time that you sit there and take it and agree with her and tell her you are sorry, you let her know that you get it. That is HOW it helps.
an expression of pain and injustice
This is what my rage and anger stemmed from. I wanted WH to not only witness, but feel the pain and horror that I felt from his infidelity.
There were times I had no control over it. One time I crossed a line and have been getting help through IC and meds to calm my moods. I was never like this before the A.
The anger and the rage needed to come out of me. I have never felt such rage in my life. My WH said he could see the hate in my eyes.
[This message edited by unforgivable5 at 2:09 PM, June 7th (Friday)]
It is awful. Alot of us don't even know who that person is that is coming out. It is scary to us. All the emotions that were placed on us when we never asked for them and then for some wh's to not want to understand or can't handle the emotions of us is so fustrating.
Time will heal her, your understanding will heal her, seeing you do the actions to heal yourself and her will heal her. Listen to her, let her vent, let her cry, let her do what she needs to do to heal.
Remember, this is something you brought into her life she did not ask for this drama and life shattering experience. Be fair to her and love her.
"You never know how strong you are until being strong is all you have left"
The anger phase helps the BS move beyond fetal position on the floor and suicidal thoughts.
The anger phase doesn't help the marriage, per se. It does keep the BS alive, if nothing else, to stop from crying so much she accidentally drives into a tree from vision impairment.
Think of the first months as extreme grief, the second half of the year as extreme anger. The second year is a leveling off stage as things work back to normal.
Oh I still get pissed at times. But not to the level where I lose control. Instead of the outward screaming, it's more of an internal "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" And now I am able to rationally express how I am feeling with my wife. The communication between her and I about affair stuff is actually strengthening our bond, because it gives us more insight into how each other thinks and feels.
So, I guess the real rage/anger stage is gone, the effects of the affair remain a part of me/us. I expect that they will always be there, but will be more of a background noise.
As tryingmybest2011 mentioned, it is helping me move forward I think. I still feel way better after my episodes than before.
All it cost us was 4 flower vases and a lot of typed out bad words.
If I verbalized my anger and she listened and did not run away I felt she wouldn't run away when things got tough.
Anger is a secondary emotion. It usually is driven by fear, pain, sadness, or all of the above.
It was important for me to let the anger be expressed as it cleared the path for the underlying causes or primary to be brought to the surface. Anger sometimes has to be expressed so you know what is feeding it.
It can very, but that is how expressing the anger helped me. It was not the anger itself did anything positive, but expressing it so I could focus on other things was invaluable. Too many times did my anger morph into sobbing uncontrollably. I was really sad and kept it in. Like WB said, it comes out in other ways with limited control.
My IC told me that I have to deal with it or it will deal with me. It made sense, still does I guess.
DS 1, DD 6 Dday 8/31/11. EA/PA. Lied to for 3 years.
Every truth comes to light in a long enough timeline.
Expressed rage can indeed make a BS even more pissed off and allow them to tell you that they are outta there IF and ESPECIALLY if the WS throws it back in their teeth, minimizes it, or tells them something like get over it. Those types of reactions are like throwing gasoline onto a burning fire. It sends it up into an inferno. However if a WS uses the rage and anger to express their remorse, validate the BSs right to feel anger, and tries to help the BS through the rage, it can actually be a bonding experience, even if it doesn't seem that way to the WS.
A personal example and from not more than a week ago. I had totally lost it and was raging at him. He acknowledged my feelings and apologized for what he had done that set me off. I stormed off to bed alone. He settled on the couch outside our bedroom door. My PTSD kicked in and I started crying. He got up from the couch, came in and comforted me, and unfortunately made a move while trying to hug me that set off my PTSD even more and I flinched off of the bed and onto the floor, telling him that he was NOT going to hit me (no, he never has, this is a PTSD reaction to former abuse that has gotten tangled up with the PTDS from the infidelity and it sometimes just overwhelms me). He pulled away, but stayed with me talking soothingly until I was able to get off of the floor and go back to bed. He went back to the couch. I started sobbing again, he came back, I raged at him, he held me and apologized and stroked me, I relaxed, he left me in bed. I calmed down and in an hour, got up and asked him to come to bed.
This experience allowed me to release grief, anger, and rage, instead of bottling it up and having it blow even worse later down the road. He dealt with it by giving me space when I needed it, specific apologies, coming to me when I needed him, and letting me know by settling on the couch that he was nearby if I needed him. When the rage was gone, I was comforted enough and comfortable enough to invite him back into my personal space. It helped us to bond. While I was enraged, I was also as a sub-text asking him if he would be there to help me, if he was committed to staying the distance, and if he truly was remorseful. His sub-text by his actions was that he was there for me.
I hope that makes sense to you. If he had come back at me with rage or apathy, it would have built another wall between us, vice tearing one down. It really is lancing an abscess. You have to release it before it gets to the systematic infection stage.
D-Day, June 10, 2012
When I was going through the worst of my anger and rage, my wife compared it to food poisoning. You've got all this nasty shit inside of you, and it has to come out one way or another. Afterwards, you feel a little better, even though the process of letting everything out was unpleasant, to say the least.
Like Skan mentioned, PTSD and prior abuse or trauma can add a whole other level to all of this. It's not easy to explain to someone whose not been through it or not witnessed it first hand, or how to react to it, although she did a very good job.
EMDR helped me with the worst of my PTSD/rage stage. I really don't know where I would have been without that.
So true!
