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It seems to happen after we make love...what a trigger..

SUCH INNER STRUGGLE...UGH:

Eight months out...R going well...he loves me, doing the right things...showing it....I love him

BUT, but, feelings are so STRANGE..up and down...this it self does NOT feel good....these conflicting, confusing feelings..

I still have questions...but I don't know the point of asking now ....what difference does it REALLY make at this point? ...I remember things -- past events that I now suspect had something to do with his affairs....DO I ASK....DOES IT HELP AT ALL????

I WANT TO ASK, but I KNOW that asking will only EITHER confirm MY SUSPICION or DENY IT...either of which makes any difference really???

THE PAST HAUNTS ME...it is OVER and just filling in the "blanks"...does it really help at this point?

One is him smelling of smoke (he doesn't smoke)when I picked him up at the station...he did confess that one time (he said only one but I wonder....) that he had just been with her...

DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS POINT>>>Will it make me feel better to know??????????????? OR am I JUST TRYING TO KEEP THIS WHOLE THING ALIVE SO I CAN GET SYMPATHY AND ATTENTION FROM HIM and be again reassured that he REALIZED JUST HOW AWFUL HE WAS TO DO THIS?

WILL THERE will ALWAYS be SOMETHING else to bring up....forever...right? I keep thinking that well "it is okay to bring this up because it is the LAST ONE"...but is it?

Maybe there will be another and does it HELP!!!!????Does it help me? (not sure at all) Does it help him (probably not at all)...does it help R even though it feels soooo painful to talk about it?????

AM I JUST KEEPING IT ALIVE for some reason I don't understand yet???

BUT ONE THING: if i ask and no matter the answer, does it put it to bed? maybe....maybe not....HOW TO MOVE ON IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!!

like all of you...never thought I would be coming to this forum....life is unexpected.....

[This message edited by morethantrying at 8:09 PM, October 15th (Tuesday)]

You're just 8 months out. Most people still have lots of questions, lots of desire to talk about it. Also, since you had months of TT, I think it is natural to have more "mind games" where you feel restless about questions, timelines, etc.

OR am I JUST TRYING TO KEEP THIS WHOLE THING ALIVE SO I CAN GET SYMPATHY AND ATTENTION FROM HIM and be again reassured that he REALIZED JUST HOW AWFUL HE WAS TO DO THIS?

To be honest, there really is nothing wrong with this. Feeling sympathy and empathy is very healing. Extra attention is probably a great thing right now. Having him own his "awfulness" is also really important. Sure, it can't go on forever - nor can it be constant - but I think it is just fine right now.

I think it is healthy that you are asking these questions, though. It is much better to recognize that sometimes pain/reminders can be an unhealthy security blanket that you just can't let go of...but I don't think you're at that point yet.

You will stop asking questions when you finally feel satisfied with the answers. For MONTHS, there wasn't a day that went by that I did not have at least one question for WH. I often found myself repeating the same questions over and over again because the answers I had received just did not completely satisfy me.

WH and I are 1 year and 8 months out from DDay and I STILL find myself asking questions every now and then.

am I JUST TRYING TO KEEP THIS WHOLE THING ALIVE SO I CAN GET SYMPATHY AND ATTENTION FROM HIM

I wondered that same thing myself. For me, there was a part of me that felt like if I didn't bring up the A, he certainly wouldn't and in the lack of doing so, we would be sweeping it under the rug. In some ways, I felt like we needed to keep it present so that WH wouldn't forget the gravity of what he did. It wasn't as much about sympathy as it was that I just flat out didn't want him to ever think I'd "gotten over it" or that we were "past it and everything was okay now." Does that make sense? But what it comes down to is that if your mind is coming up with more questions, then whatever the question pertains to is something you haven't felt closure on.

WILL THERE will ALWAYS be SOMETHING else to bring up....forever...right? I keep thinking that well "it is okay to bring this up because it is the LAST ONE"...but is it?

It really will fade with time but for now just know that it is okay to ask what you need to when you need to, even if you have to repeat the same question 100 times. Again, when you get closure and truly absorb the answer, you will stop asking that question.

It has nothing to do with dragging this out. It has nothing to do with punishing him. It's a part of this process. It's a part of the healing that each one of us goes through. Some of us need to know more than others and there is nothing wrong with that. It's just your way of coping and getting through this.

(((morethantrying)))

You are processing, this is normal. Its a trauma eventx you need to process.

I asked and asked and asked, until one day, I didn't need to anymore. For me knowing helped keep my imagination at bay. Knowing eradicated the secrets between them and brought intimacy back to us. Knowing, helped me heal.

I rarely ask questions now. If we discuss his affairs its more about our healing process, my triggers, ways to not go down that path again and to reassure me. He would discuss them with me if I needed, but I no longer need to. However, if I do have a question pop up, I just ask.

Him answering and me processing was ultimately what has helped me heal.

Also what helped me was writing the questions down and then asking him and noting he answers. Didn't stop me from asking the same questions again sometimes, but it helped yo look at it when I needed. I haven't looked at my journals in months. Some day, I may burn them.

morethantrying I am 9 months out now and could easily have written your post!

Exactly, all of it!

I have spoken about these same feelings with my IC and her questions to me were much like yours of yourself. When she first suggested that maybe I was asking questions/bringing up the A when times were going well between my WH and me in order that he didn't forget, or didn't feel that I'd gotten over it, or not to 'let him off the hook' I was kind of shocked. But only shocked because maybe yes, maybe this is why BUT at our stage it is ok to do this! Even my WH has said to me that he needs to be reminded of how much he has hurt me!

I do hope that it won't always be the case that we have this need to go back and ask and ask and ask but I feel it must be our poor brains trying to process something so awful which actually (because none of us caused these bad choices by our WS) cannot be processed because it won't ever make sense to us.

Hold on to the goodness - that he is doing the right things, he is changing his coping mechanisms and becoming more healthy and remember we are all here for support.

((morethantrying))

In the beginning I would ask whenever a question popped in my head, no matter where we were or what we were doing....and then react to the answer. My H used to say he was living in a minefield...we both were.

We then set up a time once a week to talk about the A and I would write my questions down in my journal and then ask at our meeting...by the time we had the meeting some questions I didn't feel like asking anymore but the important ones kinda' rose to the top of my list and H answered.

Over time our meetings changed to every other week, then once a month. I don't think asking kept the pain alive, asking and getting answers, for me, resolved my concerns. And I think it helped H to really think about what he had done.....his answers became a reflection of what he was feeling during the years of the betrayal and our meetings eventually became more about us than the A.

Now when the A comes up, we too talk about how far we've come, how we need to stay aware of each other's needs and how we need to keep having fun......

I think you ask whatever you need to ask for as long as you need to. As we all here at SI sing regularly, it takes time........

More, I'm 5 years out and I feel the same way. There are still so many questions I want to ask, but feel like it's been too long. I never really got full closure, so each day I wonder maybe if I knew all the answers I could put it to rest. But then again, does it really matter? We are doing good now.

At some point you will meet the unanswered questions with indifference, and those are the ones that you didn't need the answers to, to allow healing.

If you are trying to suppress something by not asking, this is not good, nor healthy. Take that question out, explore it, ask it, get the answers to it, and the others that follow because one question leads to another.

You will be amazed that once you have those answers you will be able to move forward. But right now it is just below the surface, and it is festering, and will explode at the wrong time, place, or way. Take some time to consider what you want to know. Let your H know that even though he is doing an awesome job you have just a few questions, and you would like to talk to him about it. Agree upon a nice quiet time, without interruptions to sit and discuss.

This is very important to healing, and communicating.

((((and strength)))

NOT asking could be the same as shoving the affair under the carpet. Bottling it up and letting all those questions and feelings fester and rot inside you. Not good.

With that said IMO many or most of us probably never get the FULL story. In my case the truth is that my WW is a liar. And liars lie so they can control the one being lied to. I consider WW not giving full disclosure to be a lie of omission. After Dday WW decided she wanted to R but perhaps believed that if I really knew all that went on R would not be possible. This spawned the *I dont remember* and *well you never asked about THAT* (how do I ask about something I have no knowledge of?)

IMO WW will never give the whole truth. But for me I think I have enough. I know what happened in a basic way and although WW wont say more about it my imagination can paint and fill out the rest.

I think for all of us there is a time when we know enough. Not everything but enough to decide to either R or D. I think its important to keep asking until that threshold is reached. Once you have enough then you can stop asking and let it be. At that point R is possible.

The rule of thumb for recovering from being betrayed is 2-5 years after the last big hurt. So it's early to put it to bed - in all probability, your body and brain just aren't ready yet.

The questions, I think, stem from a desire to understand what happened to us, to be able to put our life into a coherent story. That doesn't really happen, but the questions do put the WS on the spot. If she answers honestly, she builds trust and helps R. If she doesn't, she builds distrust and makes R impossible - until and unless she changes.

So I asked and advocate asking a lot of Qs starting on D-Day (and I went on asking Qs for 2+ years). Give the WS a chance to show she has become honest, after being so dishonest during the A.

I never could limit my Qs to a time and place. I continue to ask whenever I decide I want an answer. This approach works well for me, and I'm the one who counts here. A scheduled approach works for others. I do it orally. (I wouldn't be surprised if my W worked out some difficult answers in writing and then turned them into oral answers.) Written Qs and maybe written answers work for others. The right way to ask is the way that works for you.

But if you want a subject to be addressed, your WS can't read your mind, so you have to ask your Qs.

If an answer would cause me to D, I want to know ASAP. That's why I think it's essential to ask a question if the answer could be a deal breaker. The scarier the question, the more important it is to ask it.

You can talk about how to ask here, in IC, in MC, whatever. You can ask in MC. Your WS may want to hold back an answer until an MC session; that's OK IMO. (It worked for us for some questions that scared my W.) But if you ask a Q, your WS better answer it honestly if she wants to further R.

Sometime in the 2nd year (maybe 15 months out), I started moderating my questions. At that point, I began asking a Q only if I had a positive outcome in mind. Now I still have questions, but I don't ask them until I know why I want to ask them.

JMO, but if you've got Qs, ask 'em.