What I discovered about my wife 14 months ago caused pain beyond anything I could have imagined. Yet somehow I've managed to thrive since then. It's like I woke up from a long funk. It started a couple of months after D Day, once I realized that this is survivable. I became a better father, professional, parishioner, member of the community, and, once my pain started to become manageable, a better husband. I must be giving off a different vibe, because opportunities - social and professional - come my way easily these days. I have less use for meaningless distractions, like TV and social media.

SAL1995.....ah, to catch a ball game with you!

Totally get this.

My journey to what you posted started about 3 months after DD. Upon DD I chose my old coping mechs.....and chose them fast and hard!!! Horribly destructive.....they did what they have always done. They limited and, actually effectively killed any growth potential in me.

IC was key!!!

Once I became aware of their limiting and destructive nature they no longer were palatable. Pain of same was more than the pain of change.....so I started to change.

My wife is changing too.....though she is struggling right now and loses focus at times on how she is changing.....gets frustrated with herself as she still is sad at times....really sad. I do too.

Your closing sentence is a large key for me....one that opened up growth to me. It speaks to humility.

A prideful person is one who is shut down to learning. A humble person is one who is open to learning.

This journey, like most trials, is a humbling one.

Oh......and your lack of interest in TV and social media? I am there too.

Peace brother.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 6:16 AM, April 26th (Saturday)]

Yep. The field of psychology is shifting toward looking at more positive aspects of human behavior, like stress related growth. Stress is a normal variance of what we experience. though overwhelming stress as a result of trauma is not necessary for typical development and growth, it certainly accelerates it and can, if explored and incorporated appropriately, exponentially contribute to positive outcomes.

I've said this before, and I'm almost there with this experience now...I wouldn't go through it again, but I wouldn't take it back because of how I've grown from it. And I'm proud of who I am and what I've realized about or accomplished within myself.

I hope you are right about psychology starting to note the positive outcomes of some of the human condition.

I am an optimist at heart...and it is serving me well through this trial.

Peace.

Forgiveness, to me anyway, occurs at that moment when I realize that the pain that the person has caused me is no longer the first emotion I associate with their name/face/presence/thought. At that moment of realization, I discover that I have forgiven them for whatever their transgression is.

I, like SMS, become concerned when I see BS reading book after book desperately seeking a way to forgive the person who's hurt them so grievously. To me, it's a waste of time...time better spent by the BS on bringing joy and a sense of fulfillment into their own life, not figuring out how to forgive someone. If the WS is putting in the work to fix themselves (and I mean, REALLY putting in the work), and the BS is doing their own healing, I think that the 'forgiveness aspect' will come eventually.

'Grace' or 'forgiveness' cheaply given is a slap in the face of grace and forgiveness hard-earned by people who have committed horrific transgressions and fought like hell to repent. I like this definition of repentance:

Repentance is the remorseful acceptance of responsibility for one's wrongful and harmful actions, the repudiation of the aspects of one's character that generated the actions, the resolve to do one's best to extirpate those aspects of one's, character, and the resolve to atone or make amends for the harm that one has done.

I totally agree that eventually forgiveness MUST take place in order to successfully reconcile. I'd wager that it's a major stumbling block for many BH even AFTER their WW had done a ton of self-work. I think once the BS reaches that point, it's OK to do all that work on trying to forgive...but to me, it should be a little ways down the road on the timeline.

ETA: Spelling and stuffz.

[This message edited by Ascendant at 9:00 PM, April 26th (Saturday)]

But appreciating the growth because it happened!?0 Not for a long time.,,,if at all,,,,

[This message edited by rachelc at 7:46 AM, April 27th (Sunday)]

A prideful person is one who is shut down to learning. A humble person is one who is open to learning.

This journey, like most trials, is a humbling one.

Amen brother. Humbling indeed. Who knows, maybe I needed humbling. Maybe my wife needed to purge generations of recycled family pain and learn healthy coping mechanisms. Maybe this is part of a bigger plan for all of that to happen.

We can't change anything that's happened. Not a single ugly, sordid detail. But for those of us who have somehow managed to grow and thrive post D-Day, we can embrace the positive change. I know this - now that I've seen what a marriage can be, I wouldn't go back to the pre-A marriage. The disconnected, emotionally-distant marriage that was mostly a child-rearing partnership. No thanks.

Our marriage has definitely gotten to the next level. To me, forgiveness is a key part of that. I've had to forgive one catastrophic hurt along with some little ones. My wife has also had to forgive years of little hurts, that eventually added up to cause a lot of resentment.

To me, a marriage is a covenant, a spiritual bond. Maybe others define forgiveness differently than I, but reconciliation without forgiveness is something that doesn't seem possible. I try to picture what that looks like. IMO it looks like a marriage that is still emotionally disconnected and vulnerable to future affairs and divorce. A marriage where one spouse always carries a trump card, while the other always has something hanging over his or her head.

Obviously the data is so skewed towards a female gender bias to render it inconclusive. Poorly constructed and conducted study.

If I suffered selective amnesia I could probably achieve the same result.

[This message edited by numb&dumb at 11:37 AM, April 28th (Monday)]