SurvivingInfidelity.com Forum Archives

[This message edited by Jhbn4ever at 9:37 PM, March 18th (Tuesday)]

2-5 years is the suggested time frame for healing to occur .

Couple things about that .....

The simple and easy task of time passing does not heal you . My Mom, 30 years past her D of my Dad and she still has raw pain just under the surface . The work she has done over the years is work to wall off others, to guard her heart. That is not healing.... It is self-protection. Totally understand this....just using it to point out that healing work needs to accompany the passage of time .

My wife kept a case of infidelity a secret from me while we were engaged. I found an open email between her and another man.... Intimate in nature. Long story short.....neither of us did any work on that issue. 2 years into our M found my wife crying to her sister on the lack of what our M was..... That was a one -time conversation between her and her sister.... I didn't know about it and we never did any work on it. Fast forward. 13 more years......my wife commits full on adultery ..... that original 2 year conversation surfaces and I know about it for the first time. That first OM was an influence on my wife, and therefore our M, the whole time....the second was too of course .

Point is.....work , real hard, honest work is needed. It is not easy nor comfortable.....two elements that keep a person from changing. A person can shove feelings down, ignore, deny them.....but they are still influenced by them. Maybe not consciously but they are influenced.

Gently, suicide such as your husbands attempt are a cry for help and attention....and I am glad he got it. But it does not prove he is remorseful in a healthy way. It, to me, speaks more to a known escape-from-life mode of operation that is common among WS.

I wish we could change our choices of the past.....should have delayed our M, gotten really good pre-M counseling, worked on identifying our FOO and how it was influencing us. I suspect you wish you could do a few things differently too.

Reality is you are still in pain. Passage of time has little bearing on your sitch.

Are you in IC ? Is your husband? Real life friend support network in place? Have a relationship with God? Are you a reader? Doing things that feed YOUR soul? Identified unhealthy things about yourself that need worked on ?

I have learned that solo growth is much easier than M growth.....do you feel responsible for your husbands growth ?

I am so sorry your pain has lasted this long. I am only 19 months out and am VERY ready to be pain free. I pray that the pain I feel right now, this morning, will ease by time to wake our girls and get to work .

I suspect it will.... My pain ebbs and flows....and relative peace is found.

I will say a specific prayer for you both now....that peace is felt and that opportunities to grow and heal become apparent to you.

God be with us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 5:11 AM, February 24th (Monday)]

What work have you done on yourself to help you heal? Thing is, like Blakesteele said, time alone doesn't heal you. You have to heal yourself. No matter if your WH helps you or doesn't, is all in the marriage or divorces you, YOU are the only person who can truly heal yourself. You didn't have the power to force him to be faithful to you, you don't have the power to heal him. Heck you could not have prevented his suicide attempt. He is the only one who can do all of that who can heal himself. And you are the only person, ultimately, who can heal yourself. If you need to seek an IC, if you jointly need MC, whatever it takes, you are ultimately responsible for your own healing.

BTW, you don't necessarily need to forgive and you should never forget. So don't let the those thoughts get in your way.