SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am not going to repeat myself in detailing all of the ways I AM DOING THE EXACT WORK YOU ARE PRESCRIBING.

It has already been outline multiple times, in multiple instances, in this thread and in others.

Really? Trying to convince everyone that anyone could cheat? Telling us you're avoiding people and believing that it's establishing boundaries? When challenged you lash out, you tell us we're all predictable, pathetic and disgusting?

If you truly believe this community doesn't see right through that nonsense you're terribly mistaken.

No one here is trying to shame you. That's all you.

You're terrified to really open up. You're terrified to let yourself be that vulnerable. So you run, put up your walls, and say "fuck that," and fuck this site.

Look around you. Tens of thousands of people have joined this community and bared their souls, exposed their greatest fears, deepest insecurities, greatest sorrows, struggles, and most painful and challenging journeys.

But you won't do that.

And it's not because you can't.

Thank you hikingout, I will continue my attempts. I sometimes revert back into shame and it is difficult to put myself out there.

Your last post was very enlightening, I think you had a lot of good points I need to reflect on myself. Particularly this portion:

And as I developed a self love, something you have mentioned realizing that you need to develop, I started naturally having new feelings about my life.

When you don’t care about or respect yourself, it’s hard to have values. The best I could muster was wanting to avoid future consequences. Once I learned to love and respect myself, then those things began to mirror themselves in my other relationships. I not only wanted to protect myself from pain, I wanted to protect them from me giving them pain. Then I also saw how good I felt when I was doing things out of self love and self respect.

Ghostie, I find your posts about anger and not valuing honesty/integrity interesting, especially because I used to relate to this. For a long time, I felt "asleep". I didn't realize that I was "asleep", or living "unconsciously", until recently when I "woke up". But while I was "asleep", I always had a short fuse/was quick to anger, I had little to no integrity and did things impulsively and out of desperation, and I did not do a lot of self reflection. I worked a lot and distracted myself a lot.

I am now learning through trauma therapy that I was in "survival mode". Our brains contain a prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for our critical thinking skills, decision making, thinking through long term consequences/logic/morality, etc. When people experience trauma (especially as a child) their prefrontal cortex becomes less active or inactive. This can go on for a while until this person feels safe again, and during this time, the person will act out of survival. This could lead to stealing, lying, being secretive, infidelity, committing crimes, driving recklessly, sudden anger, mood swings, etc. This is in response to PTSD or CPTSD.

While this does not justify or excuse any of the decisions we make while we feel unsafe or our nervous systems are dysregulated, it does help us to understand why so many WS's say they don't "recognize" who they were during their A, or even that they don't remember certain actions they committed during the A (the brain sometimes dissociates or compartmentalizes actions taken during this "asleep" state).

I lived in this way for many years, but I slowly started to "wake up" and reflect with horror about how I acted during this time. My infidelity, my anger, my lying, my tendency for secrets, etc were all so appalling to me. For the past few years, and especially the last 6 months, my anger has disappeared and I am more patient than I ever thought possible. I am able to reflect on my feelings andrecognize my emotions and the reason behind my thoughts, something I was never able to do for a long time.

This might not apply to you at all. But if it resonates, I would maybe bring it up with your IC.

I may be totally off base here, and if so please disregard. Just something I experienced, and a lot of the symptoms are apparent in WS posts on here!

The idea that anyone can commit infidelity, what it means to me, and the time I spent discussing it here, is just a very small part of my R&R journey, Unhinged. I have written SO MUCH here on SI, in which I have exhibited the radical honesty, deep introspection, and personal accountability that betrayed posters constantly demand of wayward posters (and then, after frothing at the mouth over these things, and promising that you will be treated better if you demonstrate them, BS will inevitably punish you for them, as I have found time and time again.)

It seems to me that 1) you are unwilling to go back and read (or even to remember the comments you already have read of mine) in order to find examples of "the work" I am doing, and 2) that you are trying to bait me into going back and compiling examples for you. I am not going to do that. You do not deserve a minute more of my time, because I know exactly what the result will be.

You are not healed from your betrayal trauma, as much as you insist you are, and you are not able to see the world except through the lens of your pain. You will read my words through that lens and interpret them as least charitably as humanly possible, and often times even as directly contrary to their defined meaning, and when I point that out, someone like Sisoon will be along to insist that it’s my fault you aren’t listening, and then you and any number of other BS will see the Bat Signal and be summoned so they can accuse me of being defensive and not wanting to do the work that I literally just described doing. And you will continue to gaslight me that this is not happening the more I protest. I would laugh at the ridiculousness of it all if I didn’t understand that it will not only happen to me, but to every other WS that comes here looking for help and support as they try to improve themselves.

You have not "done the work" in order to process the infidelity you committed decades ago, and I know this because of the way you’ve minimized it and excused yourself for it on this thread. ("I was young… I never suspected my ex would do that after we had dinner and went to her place, and it caught me by surprise… It was so long ago that it was before you were even born…It was only a few minutes of making out and groping someone who wasn’t my partner, to whom I didn’t disclose it because I know it would have hurt her… Obviously I’m not capable of committing infidelity because I could have gone all the way and I didn’t") Other people pointing this out, and my warning to you over it, has obviously triggered you. To think of yourself as someone who could commit infidelity, who could hurt your loved ones so badly and betray these values that you hold central to your very identity, is terrifying and uncomfortable (believe me, I understand. I’ve been to the lowest depths of shame as I took an honest look at myself for the first time, such that I’ve become completely unable to function as a person, and come back from that) But it is necessary to put you ego aside for a minute and undergo this process, in order to fortify your defenses against further infidelity… ("BuT GhOsTiE, YoU'rE JuSt SaYiNg ThAt So YoU cAn PuT eVeRyOnE ElSe DoWn So YoU CaN FeEL BeTteR!!!1!!" Yeah, no. STFU and actually listen for once.)

And because you are triggered by this, it is clear that you have chosen to utilize against me the trauma that I have been vulnerable enough to share here with you when I believed you wanted to help me, in order to trigger me as well. And then you have the fucking BALLS to accuse me of not being vulnerable. It’s beyond unbelievable. The very definition of "unhinged." This behavior is what is disgusting and pathetic, so much that I almost, almost feel sad for you that you can do it.

I am so glad that I’m not you. I will be over here counting my fucking LUCKY STARS that I am not you.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 7:18 PM, Thursday, December 4th]

OK. I'll admit it. I deliberately provoked you, for a very specific reason. None of it has anything to do with being triggered by you, not being healed, addressing the shit that I did thirty plus years ago, or to vicariously punish you for my ex-wife's betrayal.

I knew you'd be furious. I knew that intense anger you carry deep down inside would come out like a 155mm artillery round.

This is what I see in you.

I'm truly sorry for what you endured from your step-father. It might not surprise you at all to learn that the #1 reason people suffer childhood abuse is step-parents (step-fathers slightly more often than step-mothers).

This pain, the source of that anger, has most likely been tripping you up for most of your life. I've read from countless betrayed and wayward spouses who have come to understand the same things about themselves (differing issues as unique as the individuals themselves).

I have struggled with a tendency to avoid conflict and build walls most of my life (foo shit). As you have observed, I'm far more comfortable with conflict and don't build walls to shut people out. And it took my ex's betrayal to force me to change that.

Yes, you've been somewhat vulnerable here, shared the things you've been working on. I honestly believe you’re just scratching the surface, peeling those outer layers of the proverbial onion.

As you start to dig deeper, I think you'll find that untangling those childhood experiences will help you release that anger and pain.

I'm just a stranger on the internet. I'm not exactly an expert in psychology. I don't have a PhD nor am I board certified in any way. What I do have is a deep understanding of human nature that comes from years on these boards, getting to know, intimately, dozens of people who have made similar journeys.

I'm not your step-father. I have no interest at all in shaming you, making you feel "less than," or otherwise hurting you. My only hope is to see you release all of that pain you carry and find peace with yourself.

It's that pain that led you down Infidelity Lane. It limits you, doesn't it? Haunts you? Trips you up?

[This message edited by Unhinged at 11:10 PM, Thursday, December 4th]

You don’t have to be my step father to be an abusive shitbag. You have it down pat without any sort of relationship to me.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 2:35 AM, Friday, December 5th]

** Member to Member **

Yeah, no thanks on that one Sisoon

You took my observation and treated is as an attack. You received my communication and decided what it meant.

Parse your own sentences to see how they can be read. Make you write what you mean. And posting when you're triggered is something you should avoid.

Ghostie, have you considered a new thread with a stop sign? Only WS would be able to respond.

Sisoon, if I said to my husband "No, that’s not what I mean; that’s the opposite of what I meant," and he insisted that he knows what I meant better than I do,

Or if I said, "You’re not listening. You’re interpreting everything I say as uncharitably as possible and hearing things that I’m not actually saying, probably because you’re hurt…"

And he fucking replied, "I’m the receiver; I get to decide what your words mean. If you don’t like that decision, it’s your job to communicate better…"

I cannot even describe how fucking fast I would divorce him because that is NARCISSISTIC, GASLIGHTING ABUSER CODED. Like you’re really gonna sit there and deny the possibility that you could misunderstand me? That you could have biases? That you have no responsibility, as a participant in conversation, to make an effort to understand what I’m actually saying?? Absolutely fucking not; I’m done done.

And I’m not just saying that because I’m triggered and perceiving everything as abuse… Sometimes after people spend years dealing with this bullshit, THEY ARE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE IT FOR WHAT IT IS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE TRY IT.

No fucking thank you, Sisoon. Literally everything you could possibly say after that will now be disregarded because you are not a fucking safe person to talk to.

Ghostie, have you considered a new thread with a stop sign? Only WS would be able to respond.

I honestly believe that a new thread with a stop sign is not what Ghositie needs to help her. People here have been trying to help her, before she was "Ghostie" and after.

I also honestly believe that "Ghostie" needs more help than any anonymous person on a message board can give.

I am saying some things without actually saying it, and some people here know exactly what I am referring to. If I am banned for saying what I’m saying, so be it.

These forums are all about honesty and that being a huge part of the path of getting out of infidelity.

It is not okay for someone to prey on and play with all the goodwill that is shared here, from WS and BS both, that are doing and have done the work they need/needed to do to do, to try to heal and move forward with life after what they did or what was done e to them.

And as much as I have learned from reading on these boards, and occasionally posting here and there, I say shame on you, for allowing this. Someone this troubled, if they aren’t a troll, clearly needs more help than they can find here, on an anonymous message board. And if you really care like you say you do, you would’ve tried to help her find IRL resources, instead of what you have allowed her to do here.

I have "receipts" to show that them latest name "Ghostie" is either a troll or a person that needs more help than anyone on a message board like this one, can give her.

I’m not being ugly, I am just saying what I believe to be the truth.