Apologies in advance, this is going to be kind of rambling. I was going to put this down in a paper journal but you folks here at SI will probably have better feedback than a notebook.
My BW just came and expressed that she felt that I wasn't working on my problems that led to my affair. I can see why she said that. Our lives are in chaos and I've been putting in big hours for work. My commute is an hour each way, we're trying to get our house ready to sell in preparation for a move out of state and I'm applying for jobs for the first time in nearly a decade.
Oh yeah, she's on the verge of finishing grad school. My EA turning physical was two weeks before her defense date. That got pushed back and, my god, what a shitty thing that was to have done to her. On top of the triple betrayal, I tainted what was supposed to be the biggest accomplishment of her life.
I've been trying to get to the bottom of my failures and feel that there have been some really useful insights, particularly from speaking with BW. Lately, I've been putting most of my effort into practical matters and that has resulted in very little introspection and a whole lot of compartmentalization so I can try to keep my shit together well enough to work 50+ hours a week and tend to all of the other things in our lives, including all of the conversations and fights that have to happen because I had an affair and screwed our lives up.
Unfortunately, compartmentalization is a very bad habit for me and helped get me into this nightmare in the first place. We've used the analogy of it being like narcotics. It is fine in limited quantities for specific reasons and then you stop using it. If you use it as a crutch to get through each day, it will mess your life up.
Well, it's messing my life up now.
How in the world does one get through this stuff without compartmentalizing? I want to get to the root of my problems and fix them but I also need to keep the bills paid and all of the other things that I have been talking about. When I do this kind of introspection, particularly with the help of friends, I turn into a complete emotional wreck and can barely function for a while. Can anyone offer guidance on how to do this without compartmentalizing and still be able to make life run?