SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This is my favorite time of the year. College football season. Unfortunately, it coincides with when my angel betrayed me. You see, I am a SC Gamecock fan. I hate 2 teams, Clemson and Georgia. The night before the Georgia game 2 years ago, coincidentally also my oldest sons birthday, was when they first spent the night together while I thought that she was spending the night with my grandaughter. After I found out, we started to talk and to try to reconcile. I later found out that she had a Georgia T-shirt in her drawer that he had requested she wear and she did...no doubt with NOTHING else.

Anyway, I tell you that to say this...we have done amazingly well for about a year and a half. We have stumbles on certain dates because I read a LOT of details, but we have overcome that. However, it is once again my time of the year....TRIGGER! I guess! I have started having dreams again and the mind movies are rolling at fast forward. I love my wife sooooo much, but I catch myself all the time running am movie in my mind and thinking how could you? We had been married for nearly 26 years, together for 28-29. I felt and still feel betrayed. She has bent over backwards to make things right as far as I know, but I can't seem to shake this. Anyone...suggestions?

Oh man... that's a rough one, iceg.

I'm not a sports fan myself, but I can relate to certain times of the year being triggers. For me, it is all of the major holidays, starting with Halloween. I've got majorly painful stories that coincide with each of those dates, but I'll use Halloween as an example.

A month prior to d-day, I was trying to carve pumpkins with my son. I wanted my wife to participate. She blew up at me, and went upstairs. I ended up doing all of the pumpkin carving after a verbal beat down. Little did I know, she was upstairs planning a rendezvous at our house the very next day with OM while I was at work. I didn't find this out until I discovered the emails almost a month later.

Fast forward a year, and man was Halloween going to be a trigger. We ended up taking the path of reclaiming the day, and going out of our way to make it special. Not only did we carve pumpkins, but we took the entire family an hour out of town to go to a pumpkin patch in the country to pick our own pumpkins out. After that, we carved the jack-o-lanterns, roasted pumpkin seeds, and had a good time. We kind of reclaimed the day.

I'm wondering if you could do something similar, and make the onset of college football season a huge deal. Get some Gamecocks paraphernalia. Deck your wife out in a Gamecocks jersey and hat. You have every right to cheer on your Gamecocks, and you deserve to not have to trigger about it.

Just a suggestion based upon my experience.

Best of luck to you. Hoping you are able to get through this upcoming season with minimal triggers.

Thank you Losferwords, good suggestion. We have the appropriate gear as we (or at least I thought WE)are die hards. But I still remember ripping that shirt into shreds and thinking/saying..."Were you just trying to see how bad you could hurt?" My namesake's birthday, the day before we were celebrating it and doing what we love and I find out that you were prancing around in a UGA shirt to please another man the night before? Then to top it off I find out that "their song" is "Don't you wanna stay?" by none other than than Jason Aldean, my favorite singer. Makes me wonder if she wanted to hurt me permanently and wondering if she has. I love her with all my heart and want to move on with a wonderful life together, but it just still haunts and hurts SOOO bad!

I hear you. Sometimes it's all the little things that build up into the biggest hurts and the deepest cuts. Sometimes we have to keep in perspective that the affair wasn't about us. It was about whatever was broken in our spouses at the time. Sometimes, sadly, it is about accepting that the hurt is there and pushing through anyway.

Honestly, I think you are doing the right thing by acknowledging the hurt, rather than sweeping it under the rug. Takes a strong person to do that. Working your way through this definitely improves your chances of next year and the following years being much less painful.