I'm afraid of offending some people with this post so I just want to preface it with this- everyone's journey is different and how one copes with their pain is simply how one copes. This post isn't about judgement, it is simply about a need to know if it has to be this way.
Ok... So since I found SI, which has been a blessing, I have also found an extreme amount of pain. The things that people do to each other whilst holding onto the idea of loving their spouses is incomprehensible to me. My one thing in life, my one over riding goal has always been to find love, cherish it and live for it. Yes I may be a hopeless romantic but that is me. My WH stomped all over that which in turn led me here, to a bunch of very wise, experienced and at times desperately afraid people, with good reason, who have so far helped me get through some very tough days.
I guess the reason for this post though is, does this experience really have to define our lives like I keep finding it does on here. It breaks my heart to read people still feeling as I do 1, 2, 3 or even more years down the track. I know this question may come from ignorance and as above this is not a judgement on people who are still feeling shell shocked years later. But does it have to be that way? If our WS are doing everything thing they can, isn't it just about choices for us BS. Is it that we are just too scared to make choices after dday, to stand by them in the face of maybe being wrong and humiliated again? As far as I see it currently, and this is the reason for this post to perhaps get some perspective from people with far more experience then I, we as BS have a bunch of choices to make once our WS have shown that they are capable of change.
*do i want to stay in this marriage/relationship?
*do I accept that if he cheats again that I share some of the responsibility for the pain I would then be in?
*do I want to live a life with no vulnerability so that I will therefore be protected, or do I want to experience love and the horrible dips and amazing Heights it has to offer?
*am I going to live my life in fear of things completely out of my control or work towards creating a life that I desire and deserve?
I'm sure there are many more choices but these are the ones rolling around in my head right now. I believe these choices apply to people who stay and who leave. Don't get me wrong I'm only on the path to beginning to make these choices and cement them as I feel safer, I am just so afraid of still feeling like this in years to come, I can't imagine living this way for the next however many years. I'm hoping someone can say, it doesn't have to be that way when it seems like the exception to the rule here.