D-day to 6 months is devastation; you're done with life, in shock and sick at heart. You are raw emotionally and never knew such despair could be felt. 6-9 months are full of mood swings from "it's going to be okay" to "Why am I even trying." Your thoughts are emotion driven and not dependable. 9-12 months you can actually go about 15 minutes without thinking about "it." One morning I stepped out of the shower and realized that I hadn't thought of the affair yet. But sadly, those times were few and far between. You're still up and down emotionally. Then at 12 months, sobbing again with the disappointment in your spouses selfishness 14 months you are able to have a heartfelt happy moment. 18 months the incredible crush of despair is gone. You wake up one morning and realize that the A was something that happened, not something that is happening. 20 months you no longer feel like your world is in danger. Trusting again, with your heart if not with your brain. Constantly questioning your own feelings but you realize it is fear stalking you now, not danger. 22 months you can see a future. You don't cry at the drop of a hat. You can watch television without falling apart at a love scene. Actually feeling almost back to your normal self. You finally loose that sense of being "outside" yourself. The phases can trick you, you think you're doing great at five weeks and then you hit the bottom of the well at 12 weeks. You can be raging at 10 months with a horrible anger that never appeared early on.
6-9 months are full of mood swings from "it's going to be okay" to "Why am I even trying." Your thoughts are emotion driven and not dependable.
9-12 months you can actually go about 15 minutes without thinking about "it." One morning I stepped out of the shower and realized that I hadn't thought of the affair yet. But sadly, those times were few and far between. You're still up and down emotionally.
Then at 12 months, sobbing again with the disappointment in your spouses selfishness 14 months you are able to have a heartfelt happy moment.
18 months the incredible crush of despair is gone. You wake up one morning and realize that the A was something that happened, not something that is happening.
20 months you no longer feel like your world is in danger. Trusting again, with your heart if not with your brain. Constantly questioning your own feelings but you realize it is fear stalking you now, not danger.
22 months you can see a future. You don't cry at the drop of a hat. You can watch television without falling apart at a love scene. Actually feeling almost back to your normal self. You finally loose that sense of being "outside" yourself.
The phases can trick you, you think you're doing great at five weeks and then you hit the bottom of the well at 12 weeks. You can be raging at 10 months with a horrible anger that never appeared early on.
Is there one for WS?
Or in the absence of one, could a "tenured" WS shed some light?
[This message edited by Yakamishi at 7:09 PM, January 21st (Tuesday)]
For me, looking back it would be hard to break it into specific stages because it was almost 7 years ago.
When she's ready, I hope your WW will start posting so she can get responses from other waywards to help support her in her healing.
Speaking from my WS side of the coin, I was able to work through a lot of my issues and heal within a couple of years of coming out here. I did a lot of that work through intensive reading in the WS forum, IC, and watching my wife go through her processes as a WS as well. Being madhatters, we were kind of able to trade notes with each other on different things we were reading and talking about in therapy.
Keep in mind that I didn't confess or really work on my A, aside from my own "mental processing", until after confessing to my wife and finding this web site 15 years after my own A. So, from my perspective and my perspective only, I would say the timeline for healing for a WS is anywhere from 2 to 17 years, depending on what is done with the time. If a WS doesn't come clean or do the work necessary on themselves, it could easily be longer than that.
Needless to say, I could have greatly shortened my timeline and done things a lot differently if this site had existed back in '95/'96.
Good luck, and I hope you get some more responses from differing perspectives!
Dates matter less, IMO, than progress. Is the WS changing? In ways that help herself? In ways that help the M? Fast enough to keep you working on your M or committed to R?
Recovery from being betrayed and R are very, very practical matters specific to specific individuals. Theory is much less important than what is happening with the particular people you care about.
I can't help you, but can you please help me by letting me know exactly which article this is from? I looked but couldn't figure it out.
http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/faq_bs.asp
