SurvivingInfidelity.com Forum Archives

ShockedErica11 posted 7/15/2014 13:39 PM

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the forums; I had to take a break and take a breather, but I still lurk incessantly when I have need for advice or insight and I find posts that speak in ways better than I can express myself. But this time, SI, I’m losing my flipping marbles and I really need help. Okay, so, the situation:

A mutual friend of WH and I passed away a few days ago, and it’s been harder on WH because he knew this friend longer than I have and he’s not really faced a major death in his life. Me? It was like left and right a member of my family was passing away a couple of years ago so I’ve been around this rodeo for a while. The issue I’m having is a serious bout with insecurity that is driving me nuts. From what I can ascertain of the timeline he gave me, the major stressors that happened around the time he lost his flipping mind and decided that cheating was an option was when our favorite dog died and his father had a stroke.

Now, I can only ascertain this because we still don’t discuss aspects of his affair or even mine (mostly avoidance, I think, on both our parts), but with our friend’s death that has just occurred, I’m in this state of sheer panic. My thoughts have been bouncing around, my emotions have been all over the place, and more than once I have had a meltdown (none of which WH has seen) and this morning I had shouting fit in the bathroom by myself that I’m sure he probably heard.

It centers around the affair, yes, because I have a feeling that our dog’s death and his dad’s stroke and then our relationship issues and a few other life stressors got to him and he just wanted a “break”. But I’m terrified of him wanting a “break” now. Our relationship is marginally, marginally working, but our friend’s death has drummed up a slew of (mostly negative) emotions. I’ve been supportive (I’m not a complete bitch in this situation or devoid of compassion), but I know that my emotions are all over the place and I’m flipping out inside.
I saw our friend in the hospital, and that he was basically brain dead and was just a husk lying there when that’s Just. Not. Him. I don’t know if his death is affecting me in a weird way that I am just naturally stuffing because I’m just so used to intellectualizing my pain to the point of not feeling it.

I just emailed WH and let him know that I can’t place these insecurities on him because of how I’m feeling, but is this crap normal? I mean, I’ve been around death; I’m petrified of it, but I’ve studied ad nauseum all the different aspects of it, but this just has me all screwed up and turned around. I don’t know if I’m giving my emotions a “voice” to feel this loss at all.

I just don’t know. I’m confused. What am I doing wrong here?

TheIrishGirl posted 7/15/2014 14:08 PM

By avoiding the As and related issues, you've left yourself no comfort that what was broken has been fixed.

Now that there is a stressor, you are worried about coping mechanisms. You probably should be.

Address it. Talk until you can talk no more about how you are feeling, where you believe those emotions to be coming from, and where you want your relationship to go.

It can't get better if you both agree to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, which itself is also not discussed.

tired girl posted 7/15/2014 14:21 PM

Your triggering, and because the two of you have not developed any kind of communication skills with each other you are afraid to talk to him.

You need to do it any way. You need to let him know what is going on with you so that this doesn't cause a bigger problem.

And you guys need MC.