Hey sweetie. I hear you. I do. As mysticpenguin said, your WH and my FWH sound like they could be related in some ways. A ONS, single, my gut tells me so. Not that he didn’t try for more he did. He was on AFF looking for a f-buddy. He was, before this, I would say an honorable, godly man. He was horrified at what he had done too, and when I confronted him, he pretty much became the poster child for a remorseful spouse. We saw a MC (now my IC) 6 days after DDay. He saw an IC that he is still seeing about 10 days after DDay. He slept on a couch next to the bedroom because I couldn’t bear for him to be in the same bed with me, but I would have horrible, PTSD nightmares, and he would hear them, come in to wake me and comfort me, and then go back to the couch.
Yet at 4 months out, I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to be with him. As a matter of face, we had such a blow out fight over his masturbating, that I almost threw him out of the house. I hated him, I wanted him dead, I loved him, I wanted him to hold me, I wanted to break every glass in the house (I actually broke quite a few), I wanted to F-ING LEAVE and go ANYWHERE he was not. I wrote this in my journal:
I feel like Sally, the GF of Jack O’Lanturn. Mostly dead, all stitched together with hideous, big stitches, loosing parts of myself every so often, and trying to sew myself back together. The raw, gaping wounds are starting to close, but when I look in the mirror, I see angry, puckered flesh, large black scabs, and I wonder what the scarring is going to look like. Sometimes I have to pull the scabs away and bleed again, because I see pus forming beneath. The pain isn’t as sharp it’s dull, like a knife that’s been abused. I just have this constant state of sadness with me. There are some bright spots, but the sadness just wells up and spills out one tear at a time.
You know something? Pain is pain. We all have different reasons why we’re here, but the commonality is pain. Pain of betrayal. No matter if it was one time or only the gods know. No matter if the AP was a best friend, a relative, a stranger, a hooker, someone of the same sex. It’s all betrayal. And we all have our hurts, our own FOO issues that kick into our pain, and our own tolerances.
I think that your feelings at the point in time where you are, are perfectly normal. Understandable. Maybe this was a deal-breaker for you. It very well could have been. But here’s the deal. You *don’t* have to decide right now. You can wait until you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you want to stay or go. I gave my FWH 1 year that I committed to working on R and our marriage, in that order, so that there would be time for all of the emotions to flow and for him to be able to show me that I could be safe with him again. I always reserved the right to walk if I just Could Not Take It Anymore. And I did see a lawyer. But it wasn’t until about month 9 that I made the decision that I was definitely going to stay. Recently it’s been hard again. I found out about a carefully hidden lie that FWH had hid from me and frankly, it set me back a lot. We’re still working our way out of that. Trust is an issue right now hell, I walked out of the house for 3 days and, had he not handled the aftermath of that lie the way he did, we would be separated right now. But again, that’s the thing. You take the time that YOU need. Listen to your gut. You’ll know when it’s time to stay or to go. (((hugs)))
BTW, you feel free to PM me any time you want to, sistah!