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We are just over a year from DDay, My wife filed for divorce on Sept 4, but we still live together and she has been taking a wait and see approach to determine whether I can do what is necessary to fix myself. She tends to think I won't do what is needed - not that I can't, but I won't. At this point it is more my core shortcomings as a person that lead to my affair (among other things) and not the affair itself that is the driving force behind her filing. She has said many times that the affair was NOT a deal breaker and that if I had handled the year since DDay better and done the needed work, we would be in a very different place now.

I am guilty as charged. I spent a year lying and bouncing from one quick fix to another to try to 'save my marriage' instead of really working on fixing me and becoming a real, authentic person. In that year, I've seen so many of the bad behaviors I had before and during my affair that are still around, that keep me from being a safe person for my BS.

Every so often, we see small glimpses of the person I can be and then I fall back into some combination of defensiveness, selfishness, minimizing, justifying, lying. My wife even asked me yesterday to consider talking to my IC about whether I may be a narcissist.

For a while, I really thought that I just have no idea how to do this, but that isn't actually true. I know how to do this and paralyze myself from real healing. I overthink things instead of DOing things. I don't spot the bad behaviors rearing their ugly head until it's too late. I look to my wife for the answers too quickly. I try everything but really sitting down and picking myself apart, shredding myself down to my core and looking at each individual piece to understand the things that got me here and to heal them. I avoid 'icky' feelings at all costs.

So, where am I going from here? I'm working on journaling my way through the 12 steps of Celebrate Recovery as a tool for really breaking myself apart. I'm also seeing a huge revival in a part of me that was huge at the beginning of our marriage - my faith - even though I feel like a toddler in faith right now, it is giving me some hints of courage to face down my demons, even though it is a multiple times daily (or even hourly) struggle that I don't always win.

Sorry for this getting so long but it's sort of just stream of consciousness-y. I'm just sort of hoping someone will read this and be inspired to comment in some way.

Also, if anyone is going to the SI Michigan GTG and would be willing to spend some time talking to me, it would be hugely appreciated - trying to do this all on my own just isn't working.

sodamnsorry,

Good for you for not giving up on the work on yourself. No matter how it ends up with your BW, this will help you learn how to be emotionally healthy and that's good.

I'll be there with my H at the g2g. I wouldn't mind talking to you and I'm sure my BH wouldn't either (in addition to others who will be there).

G2gs were the catalyst for so much of our healing.

sodamnsorry,

I can see your pain the the things that you have been writing and feel for you. I have to tell you, there is no successful way out of this without facing down that pain and fixing what is broken in you. It's not easy, not by a long shot, and it's going to hurt like crazy.
Strength and bravery to you- use them.

authenticnow - thanks, but it's very hard for me to accept any sort of praise for doing the work on myself. Honestly, I have done so little. Forgive my language, but I told my wife at one point that since DDay I have been working my ass off at fucking up. I was in tears as I said that and we both instantly started laughing. I think it was the wording that caught us off guard and made us laugh, but in all truth it is so not funny. It is all of that work since DDay that may cost me my marriage and not my affair. The work I've started doing has been so short lived that I'm a long way from being able to take credit for anything yet.

Thanks for the offer to chat with you and your husband at the G2G. I wasn't sure if things get serious there or if they were more fun get togethers.

G2gs are a lot of fun and some might want it to be purely social, and that's okay.

Others may want to talk and some are completely okay with that. It's whatever works for people. Nobody is made to feel uncomfortable.