I've been tossing this around in my head for a couple weeks now, and I can't parse out any logic from it. Maybe you guys can help...
Rationally, I know that infidelity is a choice, or rather, a series of choices. It is quite simply the truth that it wasn't an accident, a mistake, or something that just "happens" to WS. But emotionally, I am still experiencing a lot of fear of me "slipping up" and doing it again. I don't fully trust myself to make the right choices when faced with the same circumstances and opportunity I had with my most recent A. I guess that's probably for the best, because while The Work is actively in progress, it's far from being finished, and I think I should be hyper-vigilant of myself until it is.
I often describe the inner working of my thought processes as a board room of "committee members" that come and go, observe external proceedings, and make arguments for and against what "we" should do. Then there's a mini-me at the "control board" for the body who listens to and interacts with the committee members and makes decisions about what to think, feel, and do with my body. Typically the committee members will embody different emotions and each have only one perspective, sort of like Inside Out, except only the mini-me is permitted to touch the control board, and the CMs are relatively impermanent.
When my most most recent A was beginning, I felt so out of control. I felt like one of the CMs was sneaking around pressing buttons when the mini-me wasn't paying attention. It felt like this pervasive evil whispering in my ear constantly that I couldn't shake. I remember lying in my rack several nights, staring at the ceiling, feeling simultaneously giddy about the interactions with AP, missing my H, wishing our M was more like it was with AP, and wracked with guilt for these feelings. And I would get up the next day determined to shake myself out of it and not interact with him beyond what was necessary, but then he would come and find me before and after our shift, plop himself down at whatever table I was sitting, and draw me back into those first-date kind of conversations, and I felt like a fly in a spider's web again. The mini-me heard committee members screaming "Stop! Get up! Distance yourself!" and she/I agreed with them, but there was just that one sinister voice saying, "It's just a conversation. We deserve this. Doesn't it feel so good that someone seems actually interested in you? What if you're not imagining all of the little signs that he's into you? Remember when we used to get men eating out of the palm of our hand? And we felt so powerful... We could feel that again. Just a little thrill for now. We don't have to take it home with us..." and it was like mini-me was operating the board in a trance... I have binge eating disorder, and the A felt exactly like a massive binge: completely out of control and sickening, but I couldn't stop. And there were so many moments when I wanted to stop.
I'm not trying to make excuses for what I did. I know it was many choices. I just don't know how to reconcile that fact with feeling so out of control when I made those choices, and feeling scared that I'll make them again. It's not making sense to me.
