Unless you are lying to yourself, the experience of being betrayed by your SO is hateful and horrible and hurts like hell. It is also enlightening, on the rare occasions when I am able to step back and look at the situation objectively. I see in myself such a dichotomy, extremes of feeling and thought that are far outside my normal ways of being. I can’t decide if I think they are good or bad. They are just… fascinating.
For example, I am both weaker and stronger than I have ever been. I feel so broken and vulnerable that I have been able to accept help and comfort in ways that my pride never let me do before, because I have to in order to survive. At the same time, I am fully prepared, legally and emotionally, to kick WH out of the house if I decide that’s in my best interest. I know what I deserve and am prepared to insist on getting it. And that feels far more powerful than my accommodating self is used to being. I am BW, hear me roar!
My M is simultaneously at the worst and best that it has ever been. It’s hanging by a thread, and I’ve got scissors in my hand. Nothing is what I thought it was, and I am furious that so much of the life I loved turned out to be a lie. But we have also had more honest conversation and better sex (TMI!) than we’ve had in years, are able to see each other more realistically, are clearly stating our needs and wants, and have begun to trace the death of our M back to very early events. Our relationship has been deconstructed down to its individual pieces, which we rebuild into something else, or scatter to the wind. I kind of feel like WH burned down the forest, but cleared out the underbrush so something new can grow. Whether we grow together or alone remains to be seen.
I am more hurt than I have ever been. Gutted. Crushed. Deflated. Empty. Writhing in agony some days. The one person I counted on to have my back stabbed me in it instead. It’s enough to make me never trust another human being again, and to hate the world. At the same time, some of my friends have stepped up in unexpected ways. They have checked on me, chided me, nurtured me, encouraged me, listened to me, talked to me, called me and written me some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. I know that love still exists in the world, because they are showing it to me.
It all kind of makes my head spin.
Me & WH: 50+, married 23 years, 4 kids, now D
DDay: 3/5/14, 7 yr LTA plus multiple ONS
Conclusion: Some things are just too broken to be fixed.