Anybody else's WS have these type of interactions?
Yes. It is so hard for me to understand. WH insists that he did not want OW in any way and got nothing out of their relationship but shame, guilt, panic and confusion.
I can so relate wanting to recreate the cycle of shame, guilt, and chaos that the abuse created in my life. There is a deep seeded drive to prove one's unworthiness and an inherent knowledge that we don't deserve love or anything good. Those are the messages we get when we are abused, and those are the messages we seek to fulfill.
He is so sure that he never wanted the affair to happen, and so adamant that he wanted it to end. Yet, he kept going back to her for 17 months. When I tell him that people just don't do things they really don't want to do, he says broken people do.
I feel I've come relatively far in healing from my CSA. I used to feel utterly broken beyond repair. I can say now that I'm whole, I'm ok, I survived, life is pretty good and worth living most of the time. Despite that, there is still that small voice that points out the damage, the wreckage, the ugly scars etched on my soul. I learn to love those scars, love myself, there will always be those days where it's not easy. No matter how much I've dealt with the abuse and worked to heal from it, I'm always going to see the images (I'll spare you the graphics) from the abuse, and can't help but still feel broken just a little bit. It's really hard to explain. It's super horrifying on one hand, on the other hand, I made it, I survived. *Breathe sigh of relief*
I am angry at him for compounding his self esteem problem by throwing away his integrity. How is he supposed to feel good about himself now?
I know this really confused my BH. It makes perfect sense to me. I'm not supposed to feel good about myself, ever. I'm worthless, I'm nothing, and here, let me prove it to you, and myself. It's the self destruction. It's trying to make sense of why the abuse happened to me. "Well duh, I'm a piece of shit, see?" Somehow, it's our fault, the abuse happened because it was something about us, not the effed up abuser. You see that all the time with kids. Children of divorce somehow feel it's their fault their parents split up. Children find innumerable ways to take the blame when anything bad happens. Instead of being shielded from internalizing negative things that inevitably happen in life, children of abuse are put on the front line, exposed, exploited, and cruelly taken advantage of. It's no wonder the view of life looks awfully different from their perspective.
R with a victim of child abuse seems like a journey that will take longer than the 3 to 5 years for infidelity. My most common thought about the affair is, if only we could deal with the issues from WH's childhood without the shadow of adultery over us.
What I noticed is that healing is cyclical. And that means recovery from any trauma, infidelity, abuse. I cycle through ups and downs, I relearn things again and again, and each time, it's like it was new...although, things are beginning to stick, shortening the cycles. And each time, something new will happen. The depressive cycle is shorter, or I'm able to see my life differently, I find forgiveness, I forgive myself, there are days that are peaceful, and then more days like that, triggers become less. It's all steps that overlap each other, repeat, to build upon each other, just a gradual process, but one I can assure you, does get better and easier.
t/j...I'm sorry this post is so bad with grammatical pronoun errors...I find it difficult when discussing CSA to always be possessive about it.