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.
WS (me) 45- Dday was 9/20/2012
Wife 41 (sodamnlost on SI)
Together 9 years, married 5
Stepdad to 6 amazing kids (22, 21, 16, 15, 12, 10)
Trying wicked hard - never giving up.