Things had been going pretty well lately. I’ve been feeling close to BH and I’ve been really enjoying us spending time together. Last night, however, Monday night was a very bad night. I had had my IC and I was just talking about some of the topics that I have been working on with my IC. My BH started to ask me again why I did this. It’s been almost 11 months, and I still don’t have a handle on all of my reasons. I have been exploring with my IC my deep sense of emptiness that I have – that nothing seems to fill it. I gave myself to many men, especially in college, trying to connect, but only being used. I know I have said this before, but at 15 I lost my virginity to a 19 year old who really only wanted me for sex. Why else would a 19 year old want to be with a 15 year old.
I was telling my BH that when I was having an affair I knew that what I did was wrong, to which he replied “If you knew it was wrong, you wouldn’t have done it. It only matters that your needs were met.” I was crying a lot during our discussion to the point that my insides hurt.
My BH shuts down when I cry. He has always been like that. Before the A, he would tell me to stop crying if I was. It made him very uncomfortable, especially when it was in public. I have always been an extremely emotional person and I wear my heart on my sleeve. Obviously I have been crying a lot throughout the last 10 months since discovery. I cry at the drop of a hat. I can’t control my emotions. My BH has said to me in the past, “Where were the tears when you were fucking this loser? Why weren’t you crying when you went over to their house? You went there gleefully!” I don’t know why in those times I wasn’t vomiting or crying. I know I had a lot of psychosomatic reactions to my infidelity – night sweats, paranoia, stomach pain, crying spells in private, sleepless nights, bad dreams, excess alcohol consumption BUT I STILL CONTINUED THE MASSIVELY DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR. My body and mind were obviously screaming at me to stop, but I pushed all of the signals away. I hid them from BH. He never saw the pain and anguish I was in about what I was doing. I often felt like I was in Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart – that everyone must have known what I was doing. I should have revealed and not been a coward. I should have left that room that first night. I am trying to control my crying – he says that tears don’t do any good. I am not trying get sympathy from him. It is just all of my emotions flow out in tears. My tears have come at bad times, even before the A: in front of my 3rd grade students, in front of my psycho ex-principal, almost in front of angry parents at conferences, etc. Tears haven’t benefited me well. I don’t think I know how to express myself WITHOUT tears. I wish I could stop. I wish I could have a rational, logical conversation about my actions WITHOUT crying. How do I do that? I lead with emotions and not logic. I want to be more logical instead of emotional. Emotions haven’t really been successful for me in life.
Another thing that my BH said to me the only reason that someone would engage in an affair is if they were extremely dissatisfied with their relationship. We had problems but a lot of happiness. My infidelity is a deeper symptom of deep rooted problems in me, not about if I was dissatisfied with him. Yes, we had problems, but NONE OF THOSE PROBLEMS JUSTIFY MY ACTIONS. Any opinions on this?
[This message edited by pizzalover at 7:32 AM, December 11th (Wednesday)]