I read your post as a deeper thought - that of my role in my own healing.
In the case of trickle truth, the healing process extends as long as the lies continue to be told.
So if I come at it from the POV that after I have the truth to the extent that I am satisfied that the information I have is true and complete enough to make sense to me, then my healing can go forward from there.
Prior to that, I think I am healing, but only in certain aspects. To me, healing means I understand what happened, why, how it affects or changes my life. I also reach a point of accepting that I have enough solid information about the events that I can understand my own reactions, make decisions that are based in true facts, and can do so without losing my composure and logical thought process. And healing means I can look at the events without the deep emotion anguish I felt when I first learned of the infidelity.
How can I "sustain" my own pain? I know I did. I wallowed. I overthought many events, using a "what is the worst thing I can think of" approach, and then using that to wallow in. Because I did not have the truth right away, I did a lot of mental/emotional self-injuring by imagining things, deciding that was the "only" way it could have played out, told myself that what I imagined IS now the truth, and then cried and agonized over it.
But what I thought I "knew" wasn’t the truth. It was my way of coping, by choosing the worst possible thing I could imagine, and then making it "my truth" - ignoring the fact that I myself created it from a tiny fact and exponentially made it into something far more menacing, evil, and painful to me.
I own doing this to myself. It was born of fear, abandonment, feeling discarded and unloved. I went into that dark hole.
I’m coming out a bit now. 19 months after the confession.
