SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

20 months since Dday. Things are going really well.

A TRUE AH-HA moment. Thanks to another poster, who is still trying to understand what their WS was thinking.

Background: I am a type A personality. The true to the core pyramid lover. I need, love, and crave order. Detailed obsessed. Analytical and critical. Fiercely loyal. Great for all my life endeavors. Probably the worst for being a BS. The typical childhood abuse issues and abandonment issues from parents. Not so bad, they made me driven and independent. Self-assured. Bad for a BS. It makes it harder to forgive, trust, move-on, believe, and above all: rely upon the unknown. I know many of you BS can identify with me. The ones that live for the future, making it hard to live day to day. (The type of living you need for MC) If there are the perfect storm WS, then I feel like the perfect storm BS. The classic, "You couldn't have chosen a better person to cheat on." "If there was to be suffering, we at least wanted reason for it, predictability to it, and preparation to endure it. The randomness terrified us."

Constantly stuck in the loop of trying to understand. Until- today.

The Ah-ha moment. Do I really want to understand the why's of how a person stops being a human being? "The primary characteristics of being human is knowing what constitutes right and wrong and what it means to be responsible." To truly understand, I would need to feel it. To be in that state of mind. I don't. I don't want to ever be able to understand how these WS can do what they do. EVER

For some months, I have been focusing on me. On making myself more. On transcending this hand that I was dealt with and becoming better. A woman full of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. At the same time (so I have come to realize after reading the other post) I have begun to let go. Just as my fWH has begun to truly get the A and its impact.

I am done with focusing on him, the situation, the reasons why (which I know), but most of all understanding the HOW.

I am not that selfish and will never understand the HOW. And honestly...it scares the shit out of me to ever imagine a point in my life where I would understand that brokeness.

Can we get to a point where we feel overwhelming pity for our WS? I know I do...at this moment. It has reduced me to tears. What has my beautiful husband done to his soul? How do I help him heal the damage he has done to himself?

[This message edited by hopefulmother at 9:58 PM, July 9th (Wednesday)]

I don't ever want to feel what he felt. The self loathing, the despair, the wishing you were someone else and since you can't be, then wishing you were dead. I didn't consciously see all this at the time, because he buried it deep within, but I sensed it...I couldn't sleep beside him during the As, I would wake in panic attacks and at the time I blamed it on my own health. I now believe it was my subconscious or the energy he put out...I don't know. I feel genuine sadness and empathy for how low he felt about himself, about life. He was the epitome of creating our worst fears by obsessing over them. He believed he was a lowlife and so he became one. It's sad to me that he had a loving wife and family who would do anything for him, yet he saw none of it. He was surrounded by people who would call him a friend and yet he felt he had 'none'. He was empty and lonely in a world that had so many people who cared for him and sadly that part of things I get now, after the As blew the lid off my false sense of security and happiness.

I am very analytical too and I have tried to understand his choices time and again. I just can't do it. A rational healthy mind cannot go to the dark, twisted places that someone like him ended up. Even he in his healthier state of mind cannot describe his choices and actions...he doesn't get it either. In my H's case the As were very dark and self loathing. He never had a sense that these were good, nice or attractive people, he never felt he cared for them, they were just easy to use and put him on a pedestal. I wouldn't want to understand the reasoning and rationale he allowed himself to sleep with people he wasn't attracted to, I can't even imagine kissing someone I didn't like, let alone prostituting myself to them. It takes a certain sense of darkness and self hatred to get to the level he was on, and I don't ever want to go there. I have enough of his whys to understand how he felt and how he coped, how his FOO issues and current life issues got him to that point, but I would never want to understand what it felt like to be him...it sounds like such a horrible, dark place to have been. And so I struggle with wanting answers to appease my analytical mind and coming to terms with the fact that I will never fully get them, not the way a healthy mind can understand.

I believe that my H is the only one who can heal him. I want to help. I try to guide him into reading certain information or by mentioning certain parts of his 'whys', but the reality is it's up to him to heal himself and it's scary to give up control that way. Being analytical makes me a fixer too, and I want to help fix things or I don't feel I'm doing my job. Learning to let go appears to be the biggest challenge in my healing. Letting go of the 'reasons', letting go of it happening and letting go of trying to do the work to heal him. It's not about forgetting, but letting go of the hold his betrayals currently have on my day to day life. Allowing myself to grieve it and move on.

Sunvalley: loads of support as you process and let go. A fantastic book that I have been reading...along with all the others I am currently reading (so crazy-the self help ones and the fun ones)is "A Grace Disguised: how the soul grows through loss by Jerry Sittser expanded edition"

The book will make you cry, but it will lead you into "the light of grace".