This is for all of you in the JFO forum.
I don't often visit this part of the forum, for selfish reasons. But this morning, I was inspired to share the following with you in the hopes, that as each of you starts your day, this helps someone just a little bit.
Yes, your world as you know it has been set on fire and your marriages have been burned to the ground. There are days, you can barely lift your head from your pillow in the morning or shut off the infidelity thoughts at night so you can get to sleep.
In between these times, you walk through either an emotional fog with a mask on your face as you traverse through the daily grind with the affair either seared on your brain or just below the surface. You are exhausted, overwhelmed, sometimes manic and some times on the verge of sanity.
But you will heal, you will get through this. It is one sec, one minute, one hour, one day at a time. You will discover as time passes, you can go minutes, then an hour, then hours at a time where it doesn't consume you or you even think about it.
You still slowly gain a different perspective on your life and who you now are as a person, until one day you wake up and say "hey, where did that strength come from?". You will be in awe of who much of a bad ass you have become. Balancing the grind of daily life, the needs and reactions of a remorseful or not spouse coupled with trying to make sense of the senseless. You will become empowered by this.
You will shed the chains of self doubt and realize, you will be OKAY with or without your WS.
You will understand that life is short and to waste one more second on your WS antics (if there are any) or on infidelity is just plain stupid and while you'll know you will never get over it. You will get through it.
You will understand there will be some good days and some bad days still but that you own your reaction to these. You will know when you need to collapse in tears, be alone or when you celebrate life. You will have taken back control of your life.
You will look in the rear view mirror of life suddenly one day as you find your self; humming in the shower again, seeing the beauty of the outdoors or having a geninue belly laugh again. All of these things may seem as though they will never surface in your life, but they will. When you least expect it, but when you need it the most and have healed. They will come.
There will times, based on the "whys" of the affair that you can feel compassion for your WS. WHile you will never be okay with their choices or be able to show empathy for their choices. You will get to a point for yourself, where you can feel their pain for what they have done to you, the one they profess to love. It will be hard to watch them emotionally break down and cry over all they destroyed and you will find you may want to comfort them.
You will get to a point you are frustrated that some days you just can't be vulnerable with them even when you want too and one day you'll decide "screw it, there's nothing more to lose" and you'll be wholehearted.
As hard as it is to envision all this, you will get through it and as each of these healing moments come, you will feel a little lighter, a little brighter and a whole lot better.
Stay strong and keep doing you!
