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It's like my mind refuses to believe all of this is/ has been happening?

That's the way I have been feeling this whole time (about 7 weeks) and it's just now really starting to hit me that this isn't a nightmare.

The 1st couple weeks I would wake up thinking it was all a dream, then when I realized it was real I could hardly breath. Now I am slowly accepting that this is my new reality and figure out where to go from here. Not easy and I am sorry you are here too

Oh yeah. I would bolt awake at all hours of the night thinking, this cannot be happening.

Those first few months I floated around like I was in a dream. I think it's how our brains deal with trauma.

Now, a year and a half plus later, I'm feeling great and so much happier...and yet I STILL wake up in the middle of the night and think...WTF? I think about our beautiful years together, when things were good and I trusted him and never, ever would have predicted this...I think about the births of our kids...and still just can't believe it happened the way it did.
I think maybe in some ways that feeling of it being a dream/nightmare never fully goes away???

Very normal. It's your mind trying to protect you from the pain of your reality.

Yes, I feel the same. When I think about our previous life together, I feel the same way. Us getting married, having our babies, getting the dog, etc. It all seems like it was a dream now.

Yes. I'm sure it's as Nature Girl said - a self-preservation mechanism built into our brains somehow. It's completely normal. For the first week, or so, I truly wondered if maybe, just maybe, I was going to wake up from a dream (nightmare). For the next couple of weeks, I still couldn't believe it was true (that my wife had cheated on me), but the "hope" that I would be waking from a dream started to fade.

You're lucky to have found SI this early in the process of discovering the betrayal. I found it a bit later, so I wasn't able to do sanity checks like the one you're doing with this post.

Sorry you're here. Good luck to you.

Yes...I think and feel it's a fog of it's own, an unreality, perhaps, that our mind finds in order to handle things as they come.

So much shock.

I was a functioning zombie for at least the first two months after the last D-Day. It is normal, but will slowly start to fade as the shock wears off and your brain starts to come to terms with your new reality. I went through the motions of daily life and dealing with the upheaval, but really could not tell you exactly what I did as it is all very hazy. Time really does help so hang in there!

((((ariabook)))) It is normal, or at least what passes for normal in these conditions. Hang in there.

Totally normal. It is the brains way of helping you deal with the shock. Over the weeks ahead it will fade. Just hang in there!!!!