SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The rollercoaster is so real and we are only 10-days past DDay. Having difficulty imagining how to manage the highs and lows until they are less pervasive. Everything feels very heavy right now and envisioning a time when this does not dominate my mind, her mind, our relationship, etc. is difficult.

One thing that kept me up most of the night is that I seem to have shame triggered when my wife shows me love and grace. Every time I wake I immediately look over and reach out to my wife so I can see and feel her. I described it to her like a pacifier. I know this is not healthy so I am adding to my list to discuss in my next IC session. The first thought I have once I feel her close and the anxiety starts to wane is how grateful I am for her. I have difficulty describing how overwhelming my gratitude is, but I can say I feel consumed and enveloped in it.

We spent time in my IC session as a couple (I realize the "I" in "IC" is individual, but my therapist thought a check-in after the first week together would help) and the therapist asked my wife on a scale of 1 to 10 where she was on wanting to reconcile. She had talked with my wife last week alone to let her know that any big decisions about R or D are probably better made after several months, but did ask her if her initial thoughts included wanting to work on R and my wife had said 100% yes.

In this session my wife said she is a 10 (i.e. all in on reconciling). The therapist then asked my wife if she would tell me if/when that changes and my wife confirmed she would. All of this was because my wife wants me to feel safe knowing she is willing to give me a chance to reconcile and that she will be honest if/when that changes so I do not need to focus on / worry about that. I have abandonment issues. My Dad was serial cheater who left us when I was 11. My Mom is incredible and sacrificed more than words can express to keep our family functioning, but she remarried and we had a very tough blended family dynamic (8 teenagers and my three siblings and I could not be more different than his four kids) and my mom and her husband left us to sort that mess ourselves.

The therapist asked how I feel when my wife says she is all-in on reconciliation and I was so choked up that it took time to respond. I feel the overwhelming gratitude, but a wave of negative thoughts / emotions seems to taint it. I immediately start to focus on "why would my wife even consider reconciling with me", "I have made terrible choices that are traumatizing my wife", "maybe she is just staying because she is worried I am too unstable right now", "does she really feel safe and would she tell me if she did not want to reconcile:, etc.

My question for those who have successfully battled the shame spiral and negative thoughts, how did you learn how to accept the gift of reconciliation and feel / show gratitude for it without focusing on how undeserved it is?

I relate deeply here to what you are saying. It took a long time for me to move the needle on that.

This is something for me that didn’t happen all at once, it was incremental and gradual. Generally it takes turning gratitude towards self as one aspect. I literally had to make a note every day of something I liked about myself and reflect on evidence of the good things that are part of me. I had focused on the negative, the lack of worthiness of others, my flaws and mistakes, I would always ruminate for hours about things I said and did and how it might have hurt someone else. The more you focus on it the heavier that comes.

But truthfully, outside of the affair, there were lots of great qualities about me. Things that I did that made a huge difference to my husband, friends, family. It takes a consistent habit of making myself see some of the good for the scales to balance. I tried to combine that with daily wins. "Today I didn’t avoid this, I faced it head on. That took a lot of courage, but it wasnt that bad to face it and look at the connection it brought."

By practicing doing the right thing, acknowledging it, and combining that with reflection on good things and traits we have you slowly gain a balance of perspective. You have ruminated for so long on your flaws, bad decisions, and holding it all in while you hid from it that you have skewed your sense of worth.

Yet, you have done nothing but present to us and I believe it’s sincere that you love your wife deeply, want to commit to being the man she deserves. Yet, in many different ways you had many qualities of who it is she wanted. You provided for her, considered her in your choices, and even started to work on yourself and come clean to her despite being terrified almost to a life or death sort of sense. (I know how hard it is to confess after a short build up of a few months so I can’t imagine a span of decades). Don’t lay a wet blanket on that with what you woulda coulda shoulda. You have shown a huge growth in character, deep empathy in trying to time it right and do everything you can to face the consequences and be there for her through it. You have been a husband to her she sees very much right now as worth keeping, that came from the other things about you that she loves and sees value in.

It’s a very hard to battle shame. I still find pockets of it that I have to trace, modify how I think and behave because of it, and move forward with new ways to perceive myself. This commitment you have to growth is so huge because there are lots of people out there who won’t try and be introspective or right their path. I have a lot of respect for you in this process. But the important part is for you to stop minimizing your good and maximizing your bad.

That may not start for several months to kick in because all of this is so fresh and you are just now digging into why you are the way you are by looking at how you were formed. As you begin to understand yourself, and work on the type of thinking I am describing you will begin to modify your behaviors and thoughts to where you are able to feel proud of yourself for these little things in our day that we struggle mightily to overcome.

It’s a process and I have no doubt you are going to go towards it and keep moving through it. Right now it may just be helpful to say to yourself the feelings are normal. They will flow and they will go eventually. A lot of our suffering is in the non acceptance of where we are or how we are feeling. It’s completely normal that you are grieving with your wife and it’s creating a lot of pain. It will be through that pain and the overcoming of it that more light will come in and the ability to gain little pieces of self compassion until it’s mass is big enough for you to stay in that place for longer periods of time and then those periods will get longer and things will start feeling more manageable. These early days are horrific, hell on earth. I can only assure you it will slowly get better over time. Where I was at six months out, a year out, was nothing like being weeks or a month out. This too shall pass and you will slowly get stronger.

I identify with you a lot. I have always been hardest on myself. I carried so much shame that crawling out felt wrong. It felt like I just deserved it forever. But I didn’t and neither do you. Just try and take things day by day and stay in the present as much as you can. You have much work to do in rumination. I still work on changing the channel on mine, all this time later but the peace is deeper, wider and around a lot longer.

For some of us, the damage we do to ourselves through the course of our decisions is deep. Bit in the other side of that it’s because we have a conscience and a vision for who we should be or want to be. Hang in there, the hardest of it is actually over. It just will take some time for you to feel that.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:43 PM, Wednesday, September 17th]

No STOP sign - let the mods know if you want to limit answers to WSes.

W's IC became our MC on d-day, with a release signed that allowed the C to bring anything from an IC session into an MC session.

It took me 2+ years to accept that my W really wanted to R enough to do the work she needed to do. Every time it came up in an MC session, our MC said that W always expressed a desire to R in her IC sessions, and eventually I believed her, because my W changed before my eyes..

It took my W longer to accept that I wanted to R. When that came up, I told her that I decide what I want, and I didn't need her input. She had no need to understand why I wanted something. Every so often, though, our MC asked us why we liked each other, which I guess tested our reasons for wanting R.

I'm a bit concerned that your W may not be attending to her own pain - but I can say that I committed to R after 90 days of thought, despite how much I hurt. Some BSes go through a series of rage stages. If that happens, remember that she's raging at you, which is different from packing your bags. And if she raises issues, remember that issues can be resolved only if they're in the open.

My reco is to recognize your W has to make her own decisions.

Another reco is to be yourself. IMO, R is a process of creating a new M that serves both partners. That means, as I see it, both partners have a say in what the M will be. The goal of being yourself (and your W's being herself) is to identify what type of 'fit' you've got. A good fit is positive for R. A poor fit ... I guess I'd see it as a reason to shake hands and go your own separate ways. Why stay together if you don't see a great M coming out of the wreckage of infidelity?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:33 PM, Wednesday, September 17th]