DDay was just over three months ago and for the most part, I'd been feeling really good. In a lot of ways, my relationship with my H s better than it's been in years - we're talking more often, our sex life has improved, and we've just been enjoying each other's company more than we had in a long time. We celebrated our six year anniversary and even had our first all night date night away from our one and a half year old. He has been genuinely remorseful, willing to discuss, and has had no contact with the AP. For a while, I found myself fixated on her - since I could see my husband was sorry and trying his damnedest to save our marriage, it was easy for me to label her the villain - some pig with no respect for herself or other women - even though intellectually I am well aware that he is the one who broke his vows to me. I would occasionally indulge in social media snooping to look at her pics, partly because I was hoping to see her life had fallen apart and partly to compare myself to her physically, which is totally stupid because even though I can objectively see that I'm much slimmer and prettier than she is, I wanted to scrutinize her pictures to make sure she was truly the ugly monster I had made her out to be in my head. About three weeks ago, I had an epiphany - she's about ten years younger than me and clearly still very immature and I just felt like by disparaging her (in my mind only, but still), I was essentially bullying a high school kid. H has repeatedly characterized their relationship as a friendship that went too far on one occasion - he had no real feelings for her and never dreamed of leaving. So why was I wasting my time on someone so insignificant? Why did I need to see her destroyed? Why did I need to tear her down? I started to feel maybe a little understanding of what she really was - a dumb college kid who thinks she has the world figured out but has no clue, someone who feels insecure and seeks validation through male approval. Not a monster, just a regular, nice - albeit very selfish - girl who did something very hurtful and stupid. My taking her actions as an affront against ME personally was injecting too much of my own ego. She knew who I was, but didn't know me. She likely wasn't thinking about stealing MY man at the time any more than my husband was thinking about his actions as an affront to her boyfriend. I have to let my anger towards her go and I realized I didn't want to spend the next ten years of my life checking up on her, cheering her failures and mourning her successes, so I put her out of my mind. For three weeks, I barely thought of her and I felt better than I had in a long time.
And then, out of nowhere, the thoughts and rage came back about 5 days ago. "Did it make you feel like a big man to impress such an easy target - a sad, fat pig who leeches onto any dick as if semen contained the cure for low self-esteem?" I asked my H and other such nasty witticisms. I've been once again engaging in revenge fantasies in my head - imagining emailing her family members, employers, and professors or printing up fliers with her name and stupid, bespectacled face on them and something like, "MISSING: My dignity. Last seen in the back of a married father's car, another coworkers bed, or at the bottom of the plate of cheese fries I shame ate the other night. If found, please feel free to punch the dick out of my mouth and let me know!" and hanging them up around her campus and apartment complex. I caved in and spied on her social media again today, looking for what - I don't know. Even though I felt so stupid and guilty for doing it, like I was backtracking from that earlier epiphany, doing so did humanize her again to me and took some of that anger away.
Yet as I said, I really and truly want to move on from her. I want to get to a point where I don't think of her at all and if I do, it's with some regret, but no wishing her harm. I want to use the pain of my husband's A to rise above the petty bullshit, the mean girl behavior I've been prone to indulge in whenever I feel threatened by another woman. I want to be kinder and more mature than that - for me, not for her. I am only three months out and I know this will take time, but I am just feeling ashamed of myself for allowing myself to get back into that dark and useless place the past few days, as she has no idea I'm hating her so hard and isn't impacted by it - it only hurts me. Does anyone have any advice on how to avoid going down the rabbit hole with these pointless and self-destructive feelings toward AP or is this just a matter of time?
[This message edited by Thella at 8:19 PM, June 18th (Wednesday)]
