SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This time last year I was in hell and my husband was in the last stages of his fog before I blew the whole thing up. I didn't even know about his most recent (and most devastating) affair. I just knew that after 3 years of us supposedly being in R, he had decided that to truly be 'himself' he needed to go back to polyamory. He wanted another wife and I just wasn't enough. He was fixated on a friend of mine he'd introduced me to but she supposedly wasn't in to him and she was appalled by his behavior and was supposedly helping us through our issues...mostly by siding with me and telling him straight up that his behavior wasn't 'poly' at all...and that I was the best thing he ever could have had. What a blessing I was to him because I loved him so deeply even after all we'd gone through and he'd perpetrated so far. Blah blah blah They'd actually been having an affair and she was eating up the fact that even though I was so amazing, she must be even more so because she could take him right out from under me. But again, at this point, I didn't know about that. I thought I had a real friend backing me up.

Then he told me I wasn't the most important thing to him and he wasn't in love with me. My kids came and told me very odd stories about her which amounted to her trying to cause splitting between them and me and I told both my husband and my 'friend' to get out of my house (she had moved in after losing her apartment).

When he wouldn't remove his wedding ring, OW got mad and sent me an email outing them.

It was a disaster of epic proportions but sadly, not an uncommon story for so many here. It's funny that they all think their situation is so unique and special when in reality, it's just SO common!

Anyways, I feel like I spend a lot if time 'ruining' things. I have a hard time just spending a full day with my husband. Often, the blow ups seem like they come from no where although in reality, I've been triggered by a memory. I try to instigate making love with my husband just to be plagued with the memory of him saying I wasn't aggressive enough and OW chiming in (as if she'd know?) that I wasn't very aggressive sexually...WTF? To that I said that my legs opening and closing was in direct proportion to how he was acting and she conceded that point but again WTF?

My WS is doing and saying all the right things but now, almost a year out, I still feel so worthless. I'm bipolar so I struggle with ths up and down all the time anyways but I've also been told and shown so many times that I'm not enough that its ridiculously hard to separate chemical imbalance from reality.

We try to go on a date, I ruin it. He tries to tell me how beautiful I am, I ruin it.

I'm so tired of this. I understand tat the reasons for the affair crap don't have much to do with me. I really do get it but....I seem to have something to do with attracting people who treat me badly. Ive done a lot f personal work on boundaries etc but the past just keeps on coming.

Now, my husband has all but had a revival. It will be interesting to see what he does with it. So far, so good...but I feel like my pain and mind movies will damn everything no matter how changed he is! He will get sick of my negative responses at some point. I'm a handful at best but now, I'm just as weak as OW decided to call me....which I find a little funny because she was enjoying a big dose of my 'weakness' as I kicked her out with no job and no where to go. I wasn't weak at all then...but now? I feel like a deflated balloon.

How do others get over this hurdle of ruining everything with my own continued pain?

How do you get over feeling like a stupid fool for even trying to get to a place of R? How do you just make love without feeling like nothing about him (or her) are yours and you are no good but might as well try any ways?

I'm frustrated and I'm tired of continually causing problems even though nothing bad is happening now.

BeautifulEmpty, you feel like this due to "rug sweeping". You haven't fully dealt with the A, or had closure, so it keeps rearing its ugly head, and will do so again and again until it is decapitated.

Have you two been to MC? Has your husband agreed to be monogamous? Have either of you gotten IC?

We are both in MC and periodically IC but it is hard for us to afford it all, all the time but we are jamming in as much as possible.

I'd like to explore this idea of rugs weeping further. I know I've done it extensively in the past. It was how I dealt with all the raging pain of extremely mishandled polyamory. It was my method of getting over petty jealousies because I didn't realize that jealousy was there for a reason. In general, I wasn't jealous at all but once he started throwing all our rules out the window and running me over with emotional Mac trucks, I started feeling jealous. I rug swept and swept and swept just to say sane.

I've been trying very hard not to do this again and he s being wide open.

What do you see me doing that I'm missing? I'm not being at all defensive btw...I asking very honestly because something is extremely wrong and I can't get a grip:(

Thank you for replying btw,,,I know I only make partial sense.

I am the same way. My FWH slept with someone else when we had just begun dating. We weren't "in a relationship", so it was basically rug swept.

However, it still hurt. So when I was hurting, I would lash out at him so that he was hurting as well (usually a cruel, underhanded comment disguised as a "joke", to mask my own upset mood).

This time around, when I am hurting and want to make him hurt, I instead stop, examine what is bothering me, and tell him, giving him a chance to comfort me.

Like the other day, I was having to correspond with OW (we are trying to get the ball rolling on OC being adopted). FWH wanted to be intimate/affectionate.

What I wanted to say is: "Yuck, I was just reminded of whose bed you've been in, do you *really* think I want any of that?"

What I said was: "Dealing with OW about OC reminds me that you had a child with someone else. In order for that to happen, you had to have unprotected sex with someone else--OW. That disgusts me, and does not make me feel like being intimate with you."

Instead of getting mad, he held me and apologized. My first comment would have made him defensive, hurt and angry. The second comment gave him a chance to "make it better".

Do you see?

Bleh...I do both things depending on what escapes from my mouth first. Sometimes I swear I have verbal explosive diarrhea! >.<

My first thing is typically that I get hit with the trigger. I try desperately to choke down the immediate feeling of my stomach caving in. Then, I tell him I don't want to talk about it or a strained version of 'I'm fine'...he almost always notices the change in me though. Then, I try to dig for proper words but I tend to FEEL things rather than have WORDS for them so it's often extremely hard for me to say what the problem is. Then I get frustrated and things start to make less sense from there...if they ever did to him because while I know what's going on, he can't read my mind :/

Now, second scenario is simply that he doesn't notice my demeanor falling on occasion and this triggers my nasty, sarcastic, snarky side...the one that wants to share the pain because if I have to feel this all the freaking time, so can he! So...along comes the nasty couched in the 'joke'. The whole thing is ridiculous.

I don't know how to handle it any better.

I just erased a huge portion of this. I feel like ranting so I'm trying to reel it in.

Hi BeautifulEmpty - I'm quite new here myself and have found so much support and advice it's been overwhelming (in a good way).

I think you've had some good advice from Want2help and I agree with what she says regarding how to word things - not always easy I know (I really did love your expression about having 'verbal explosive diarrhoea'!

I just erased a huge portion of this. I feel like ranting so I'm trying to reel it in.

I don't think you should erase things. People will understand if you need to rant - you can always start a new thread which is entitled 'Need to rant' or something similar. Then people will know that you don't necessarily need advice or responses but need to get it out there. This can be therapeutic too!

I'm so sorry that you have to be here in these forums but thank God they are here along with such amazing people.

((BeautifulEmpty))

Now, second scenario is simply that he doesn't notice my demeanor falling on occasion and this triggers my nasty, sarcastic, snarky side

You can't expect him to pick up on your emotions. You are likely not the same emotionally. You have to come to him and express these things.

(((BeautifulEmpty)))

Thank you both for your replies.

Do you ever feel like you just want to be done talking about it or hearing 'I'm sorry' or being comforted? I don't feel I deserve it. I didn't deserve it when I was begging for him to stop apparently or when I told him that the path he was on would strip away the last vestiges of anything sacred to me.

Now, we are here and he wants me to think of things as sacred>.< I guess that's just time and good behavior on his part.

Idk I feel like I'm floundering...if I want R, I must, at some point, stop dwelling. I don't really feel like I'm intentionally dwelling but more, I'm being assaulted with triggers and memories. He brought her into our home and every detail of my life so there's no where I can escape trigger free. I try to intentionally not dwell so much that I'm edging back into rug sweeping.

I'm tired of the look of hurt on his face when he's being loving and I can't respond normally because it just doesn't mean the same as before...it can't mean the same. I hate that. I pretty much hate everything about this. I wish my brain could settle on some perspective that I could hold to longer than a moment.

I think a problem I'm having is that, while many BS's complain (Rightly) that their WS is trying to rush them through the process, I am doing it to myself.

I've always been a 'suck it up and drive on' sort of girl. Its how I've survived a lot of brutal stuff without shriveling up. Some of my erased rant had to do with the stuff I've gone through and how I've been treated while trying to express my emotional turmoil because of those things. I have an incredibly wrong but (in my mind) undeniable attitude towards myself and what I deserve. It's coloring everything in ugly shades but my 'proof' is undeniable. Someone posted about how the AP getting off Scott free was like being a rape victim, having the jury come back with 'not guilty' and the rapist getting to laugh at you on their way out of the courtroom. This is essentially my life. While everyone rushes to the side of someone who's had a miscarriage or whatever...I've gone through all the same thing and been told I was a whiny bitch who needs to shut up the moment I said anything. My way of dealing after years of this is to not talk about it.

This is by far the longest I've ever taken to try to work through something. I realize that my method isn't effective for long term healing but it is surprisingly hard to slow down and take the time needed.

I'm sorry I'm so scattered. I'm having a really hard time writing concisely but I appreciate you taking the time to sort through it.