Am I just torturing myself and feeding the obsession? Does anyone on here have advice for how to navigate holidays etc during this time? I feel like it will be 6 months of triggers and I will lose my mind.
I think this is normal, I know it was for me. It is very, very, very hard. There are multiple ways to approach this, one is to go to a support group and talk about your feelings, this is a good place for that. The other is to talk with the partner who betrayed you about this.
There is one train of thought about this that obsessing about the affair, and the details, is part of the healing process, and that dealing with these things repeatedly, going over and over and over them in your mind and with your IC or MC or partner or support group actually helps desensitize you to them over time. However, it can become unhealthy. Only a good IC can help you decide if you are on the right path.
FWIW, my wife is the one who has the most trouble with these periods, she struggles with holidays, birthdays, anniversary days, etc, and she
CANNOT talk about the affair. She just goes down the rabbit hole of despair when it comes up, wants to kill herself. Years of IC and MC, medications for depression and PTSD, and she cannot do this, 12 year after the affair.
So we don't talk, bringing it up is traumatic to her and I had to accept that we simply cannot talk about it. I come here to read, and hearing others stories helps me to a degree. Which brings me to the donation issue, I'd donate to the site, but my wife would see it on the CC and she'd just go into a spiral of despair. We barely make it through the months as it is around the antiversaries of the affair.