SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Sadly it really is everywhere. As a BGF, I feel like I've lost far more than the relationship, man and memories I believed I had. I now feel like I've lost movies, tv, reading (even the news), restaurants (when I see a man check out another woman who he's not with), shopping (magazines at checkouts), and my biggest joy.....music.

The music has really crushed me this time. My WBF still finds that joy. He listens to it constantly. And all I hear are songs of men singing about these beautiful young women, or women singing about being burned.

Sadly, this has stolen far more than what most people want to believe or understand.

Forgot about music. For some reason PINK really seems to have every song for this. Think she may be a BS. Don't remember her story. But yeah music, the news. Shows we used to love to watch. We still do...Law and Order SVU...but shit every episode. As much a "trigger" for me as her. I hate that word now by the way.

It is everywhere.

It fills in the gaps left by what we once were.

We did/do not watch television.

We would watch movies.

Now, movies suck. WH watches, or has movies running ALL THE TIME. I think, he is using this as a 'filler'. Cant talk while the movie is on, right?

For me, SHE is everywhere.

Every, young, tall, shy brunette. Every girl in her twenties.

Every love song, every park, every group of young people walking down the street, or sitting in a restaurant.

Every summer, affair season.

Last week, when I was paying for groceries. The clerk looked so much like OW, when she smiled and looked at me I choked.

I cried all the way out of the store, all the way home. WH, looked at me like I was a crazy person.

For him, its over.

For me, I feel as if I have been left out of the good stuff….I want to be a lover, I want to be desired, I want someone to look at me with light and respect in their eyes… I want to feel good again. But, it is everywhere, like a stain. A filthy rancid oil, upon my skin.

If only I could wipe my mind clean, clear. I could breath?

I know it isn't the same but in talking to friends I likened it to how when I was pregnant all of a sudden I noticed so many pregnant women walking around. I noticed all of the babies and baby stuff around - in every shop. All over TV. It felt like everyone was having a baby or had just had a baby.

I had my last baby 3.5 years ago. I don't notice a whole bunch of pregnant women around anymore. I don't notice every baby or all of the baby stuff around in shops or TV. I'm not so tuned to that frequency anymore, IYKWIM? Because it isn't something happening to me.

I still 'trigger' sometimes in positive ways when I do notice pregnancy or babies.

I imagine it is kind of the same with infidelity. I know it is everywhere but it always has been. We notice because it is happening to us (WS/BS alike).

Perhaps there will be several years where we'll notice and trigger regularly and then it waxes and wanes. It hits us harder sometimes than others. I don't think it ever goes away because, like the pregnant situation, it DID happen to us. I just think it starts happening less regularly and with less intensity.

I am D - I can now sing along to songs that used to have me weeping. I can watch shows with affairs and still think 'you bastards!' but it doesn't cut me like it used to. I'm not immune to it but my hide is thicker. I notice other parts of the storyline as well. Not just the infidelity. It took time for my skin to grow back and more time for that skin to start thickening.

I don't think it defines your life forever even if you do carry memories of it forever. Those memories aren't always so heavy or present. That has been my experience anyway.

I don't intend to minimise or compare a joyous event with a painful event. My analogy is meant to suggest maybe there is a frequency we are heavily tuned into for a time but that the signal isn't always so strong and deafening, even of it is always audible.

[This message edited by SBB at 5:22 AM, July 1st (Tuesday)]