I am sorry to post at a low point when I have not been posting for so long.
I have undertaken that social experiment that maybe activity here is SI was helping to pull me lower on low days... So SI abstinence may assist in hanging onto good feelings.
(it is a fallacy me thinks!)
I have still had the up and downs and cycles that the joy of recovering from infidelity brings. Just been trying to manage through them with H., MC and my own self.
Generally, I think old friend time has been helping. More days do overall fell better.
Then over the last week or two, it has been a slow creep. this feeling of a vice around my lungs. The dread. The replay of images, sentences, disclosures, omissions.
I have been looking online for 'signs' of the AP. Second guessing pieces of the 'story' I had previously accepted.
Tonight, I switched into the lead up to his affair and recalling a disclosure of him registering 'signals' from a different woman to his AP while overseas ... and on his trip home for the first time registering that he 'could' have an affair... and within four weeks was active in the building of an EA...
It keeps hovering in my brain. That he has proven to me all he needed to be unfaithful was opportunity and an available AP. So why not when he was overseas with this so called colleague. It is like a scratched record going over and over in my mind.
And this far out ... does it matter? I don't know. It matters if I don't have the truth. And for months and months I have not second guessed that I have the whole story.
It is all but the eve of the 2nd anniversary of affair season.
I don't have the energy or fortitude to get through anything even close the 1st.
I am sorry SI for coming back in here with my own need on my sleeve.
It has been a long time since I have given to this community. I understand that.
Blessings to you all
Meg.
Im so sorry you're hurting.An anitversary tends to drag things up...things we thought had been settled. Have you talked with your FWH about these feelings?
You have such a way with words,and you are always so calm,so comforting. I hate to hear you are going through this.
(((((((MegM))))))
..that feeling you get in your stomach, when you heart's broken. It's like all the butterflies just died.
Confused, I don't feel calm, not on the inside. I feel that topsy turvy feeling, that disequalibrium.
Freddy is really living in the moment just now. Has a temporary prmotion at work, we agreed together that he should take. It has been a shot in the arm for his esteem. He has been feeling very low for a few months while deliberatly peeling back the layers of who he is, what in him allowed him / compelled him to blow up is world.
He got so low, that MC and I both agreed to allow that work to continue, and take the foot off in terms of direct A work.
Freddy has put his self journey on hold while working up a level.
Apart from the obvious anniversary issues, looming dates etc, I think I find a security in him actively pursuing answers and self discovery.
I feel very anxious when he "gets on with normal" I guess it is about trust. Because I watch him get caught up in the ego games and false 'strokes' of his work environment. And it is my thought that in the culture of ego he really seperated from his true self, his concience and integrity- that was the backdrop to his affair.
Ahhh. It makes me feel cruel that I feel better when he is surrendering to work of 'self' and feeling the pain of peeliing back ego and feel worse when he is 'enjoying' the harvest of his vocation.
Last night in a work related conversation he was mentioning a relationship with a stakeholder organisation. I mentioned how this was a contributor / symptom of the early affair. He denied it and and was hurt that I would link his professionalism to his infidelity. (They were fundamentally linked). It makes me even more fearful that he is allowing himself to compartmentalise and forget all the steps that led him to betray himself and us.
and I will not be his "gods police" I will not be his morality or judgement of integrity any more.
It has to come from within him.
The waiting for him to action the faith I have put in him is painful. It is my lesson this, my burden - to not fix it, not control it, but to assess if the marriage honours who I am.
Calm ... if you find some could you send it on over?
I have a temper, quick to fuse I am afraid and I need to allow hurt and fear to be expressed differently. So far (this time) so good.
thank you all for being there. I welcome any thoughts and challenges that might stop my head spinning.
bless you all
Meg
It sounds like you have the A season and perhaps feelings of limbo while Freddy takes a break from working himself to throw himself into work? And those echoes, and our self defense alarms calibrated to a higher or earlier alarm after the betrayal.
In our R or limbo or whatever it is, have been feeling some normalcy here, but the hearing an echo from past patterns that I can't shake. Is this how he started before? Is this behavior part of him, his character? Am I safe with it?
Ask, talk, share with Freddy and in IC. Don't direct his healing or rebuild his boundaries. You are right on that. Keep tending your boundaries and nurturing your healing. Thinking of you. OAI
Married for over 15 years 2 beautiful boys in elementary school
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Maya Angelou
And for your comfort and permission.
It is so helpful to have what I know to be the better path validated.
You know I have always respected and valued your opinion.
I have been working through my own reactions over the last week or so - A funny thing these turbulent feelings also aligned with our eldest DD's formal night (= prom)
As it go closer I was more stressed. I felt like I was carrying the preparations and organisation.
I then realised, my awareness of his affair of course struck when I was carrying all DDs demands and schedules with the stage production they were in. He vacated the parenting space. And her opening week was when the clanging bell went off. I think something about the stress of wanting her event to be wonderful, combined with him being busy and not around, just echoed the A. time.
Because I am feeling calmer. I know he is trying to reassure me.
Last week, he got reactive with me and when I became angry at his lack of assistance one morning, he told me to "settle down"
Nothing for a trigger like those words!
... sorry for my ramblings friends.
take care everyone. Meg
