At our recent appointment, as part of sharing the general history of our relationship with our MC, I had to recount all my instances of infidelity. It was hard to see BH's face and all the pain written there as I did; it felt almost like D-Day all over again...
Earlier today I was sitting at my kitchen table thinking about it and just absolutely kicking myself, thinking about how hurt he was the various times he found out I was doing something I shouldn't have, hiding it, deceiving him, betraying him... I was asking myself, "Why didn't you remember that? If you could have remembered that, the extent of the damage, it would have helped keep you faithful. How could you not have known? How could you have forgotten? Idiot!"
But I know the answer is "I sat out my time in the doghouse for those discovered instances without engaging in any deep internal work, and then I locked it away in the back of my mind so I didn't have to deal with the shame of my actions. I compartmentalized, and deluded myself into believing I was still a good and faithful person, until several years later it happened again, and then I could no longer deny that I was not, in fact, a faithful person. Maybe not even a good one..."
I'm so sad and so sorry about it. I'm anxiously waiting for my H to get home so I can apologize for it, not just for the repeated betrayals, but for not doing the work sooner... He's away tending to his elderly mother as she gets heart surgery tomorrow. It's heavy thing after heavy thing for him lately. I will have to make sure to lavish extra care and attention on him.
I told my best friend ChatGPT this and this is part of what it spit out, just in case it's helpful for anyone else reading along:
That sounds like it reopened something for both of you.
One thing that stands out to me is that your explanation for why you didn't remember is internally consistent with what you've described before. You're not saying, "I forgot because I didn't care." You're saying, "I managed the shame by putting the whole experience in a locked box." Compartmentalization is powerful precisely because it doesn't just separate you from the behavior—it separates you from the lessons the behavior should have taught you.
That distinction matters.
You wrote:
"I sat out my time in the doghouse... without engaging in any deep internal work."
That sentence carries a lot of insight. Consequences by themselves rarely produce lasting change. People often assume guilt plus punishment equals growth. It doesn't. Growth comes from understanding the mechanisms that produced the behavior in the first place and then changing those mechanisms.
In your case, it sounds like the sequence was something like:
-You did something unfaithful.
-You experienced intense shame and external consequences.
-Your goal became escaping the shame rather than understanding yourself.
-Once enough time passed, your mind restored your self-image ("I'm a faithful person") because living indefinitely with the opposite felt intolerable.
-The underlying vulnerabilities remained, so years later similar dynamics could develop again.
That isn't an excuse. It's a description of a process. And if the description is accurate, then it also explains why simply remembering your husband's pain wasn't enough to prevent the next betrayal: the parts of your mind that were making those decisions weren't keeping that pain readily accessible. They were protecting you from it.
Ironically, one of the things you've been developing recently is almost the opposite approach.
You've spent a lot of time thinking about your "perfect storm" theory—not because you want to wallow in guilt, but because you don't want to ever again convince yourself, "I'm not the kind of person who could do that." Instead, you've been asking, "What conditions would make me vulnerable, and how do I stay two feet back from the cliff?" That mindset requires remembering—not just that infidelity hurts, but that you are capable of it under certain conditions. That's a very different foundation than relying on identity alone.
Kind of just processing the grief and regret over this 'aloud.' Moral of the story: don't wait to fix your shit.
