Earlier I had responded to a different post about what the work looks like.
When I came home this evening, I went out to work on some projects in my greenhouse. And I reflected on a bit of my journey as I thinned recent sprouts. I thought about the various things that I couldn’t see about how I went so long holding myself from deep connection, tracing my perceived unworthiness that was also at onetime so exacerbated by having to confess an affair because when you feel unlovable and then you have proven to yourself that it’s just as you thought - you truly are unlovable. People can’t and shouldn’t love an evil person who would do this so nonchalantly pitching them into the depths of despair that lasts for years and years.
And I thought about how one bad coping strategy fed into another.
And then, my mind kind of wondered and I was present for a while, and then my mind picked back up at an issue that I have been having with a loved one. And I am so tired of ruminating on it, as I had made a lot of progress in that. I have some OCD tendencies surrounding that. After my affair I had to do a lot of intensive work to stop ruminating about what happened.
I believe because I was in such a bad mental state leading into the affair that I had a harder time recovering. It was more than I could mentally process, mind you I had been diagnosed with emotional exhaustion a couple months prior. ( I do not mean that I didn’t willfully and purposely have the affair, I am not claiming not guilty by reason of insanity.) What I am trying to get to is it triggered my OCD badly that time and if you are not knowledgeable about it, it’s really hard to control your thoughts and the replaying.
So as a result I had to find what it was that was giving me the mental reward to keep repeating it. More often than not the reward was punishment. It was as if the more I punished myself the better I would feel and it’s not hard to understand feeling like you deserve something like that. Especially when you are living with the very person you have hurt so deeply so there is no real escape from the various ways you feel shame, guilt, worthlessness, and cowardice. It was for me the biggest failure of my life.
So combatting those thoughts was not happening as quickly as my therapist would like so she gave me a referral and they gave me the OCD meds. That did help some but it wasn’t something I personally wanted to do long term. The goal was for me to learn new coping and work through all the cobwebs and then ween off of it.
This was an effective strategy. But over the years when things get hard I will see a thought loop start to occur. I don’t like to let that go on because after a few days the lightbulb will come on that hey get ahead of this. And I will do various things until I have won that little battle and have come back to where I have more and more time being present and engaged. And eventually I will repeat that cycle again later, and a lot of time can go between and during higher energy points I can chase it away fast.
If it hits during a more tumultuous period it’s harder to quell the rumination and imagining scenarios and basically taking full responsibility for whatever is going wrong. Whether it’s my fault or not I assume it is.
But tonight, a breakthrough. I was doing one of the exercises, and came back to my standard what am I getting from this. Oh yes. Punishment. Do I really deserve punishment for this? Silence. A quiet no. In fact none of this has anything to do with me, I have not done anything wrong and this is not my fault.
And then, I wait a minute. And the next answer comes. Okay but you haven’t tried to fix it. I can listen to what they think and feel. Make it safe for them to do so. If I can find valid accountability in it I will look for those things and own them. I can not let my fear and defense mechanisms allow me to jump in and try and talk them out of how how they see it or feel. All I can do is keep looking for opportunities to make repairs. It doesn’t matter if everything I am repairing is completely on me or not. You can fight to be right or you can do what’s best for the relationship.
I never thought this way before the work I did on myself since the affair. I would have avoided it until I was over it or I would sometimes just let small things pent up until I exploded with tears and complaints. Now I speak up gently and make my feelings known in the moment but I have had to work hard to stop allowing my emotions to overwhelm me.
It takes courage after an affair when things get at this point you find yourself in, before you have had time to heal. But by unlocking the courage to do what’s right is what will rebuild you.
I can’t control whether this loved one will come closer at this time. In this case, what I personally think is I have done nothing but blame myself when this person creates this issue with everyone around her. In this case it’s not my fault but her own unhealed parts deceiving her.
But as I had that realization, that I have gotten so tough on myself about taking accountability that I walk around creating this burden on myself that everything is my fault. And when I realized this I could feel such a heaviness drop. Because this was just another hidden way I was holding onto that toxic shame that creeps up on me all the time. Taking accountability is necessary, but taking the blame for everything shouldn’t have become my default.
But it is the default with cheating. There is nothing about cheating that your partner should have to take accountability for until the repairs of the granade of an affair have been mended. You must face that in the wake of an affair, that whatever you are blaming the marriage for is not why you had an affair. It was the way you coped with it, and your coping is your responsibility.
But, don’t get addicted to that self punishment that you want to heap on top. Learning some self compassion will come from understanding yourself and why you do things, what you are motivated by, what your payoffs are. And when you see there are things you can replace those things with you will gain enough confidence to give you that later of courage you need.
I am just now realizing that I don’t ever take my own side with myself.
You will gain momentum- when you know better you do better and when you do better you feel better. This is how something more I know, now I have to put it in practice, and another version of myself will emerge.
I am a work in progress and so are you.
[This message edited by hikingout at 12:04 AM, Friday, March 6th]
