You mentioned that you feel like no one understands. And I just want you to know that I understand you! I completely understand you!!! At one time or another I could have written every word that you say, other than a few changes in small details, and it pulls at my heart strings to read it. So, so many triggers all over the place, and things (like her dress) that most people, and even HER, would not even notice as a trigger, and it gets you like a knife in the throat. It takes over and the flood of emotions is indescribable. Even if you know they can be illogical, they still hurt like h3ll and you just want them to go away! It's hard to thought stop. It's hard to breathe normally.
I could never escape my triggers because some of them were simply inside my own head. Just my normal drive home from work that I have had for so many years became a trigger because I now (after he came back) had 10-18 months of sad memories driving that same drive. I would literally start gasping for air and tearing up just sitting in traffic. Any car that looked like XOW's car was a trigger. Driving by the intersection where she used to live. Not even seeing her, but seeing our mutual friends, on social media, even tho most of them had dumped her. Seeing clothing that my H wore that he had during the stich pre-BD, was a trigger. Just seeing HIM sometimes (and I saw him every day). Memories that used to be only good before BD had now lost some meaning and had become tainted. I could go on and on ...
I don't know how to tell you to turn them off. I wish I did. There is a reason so many former LBS give up and this is it. When we get comfortable with their return, the pain of what happened and the PTSD are all consuming. It sounds like you had a lengthy and rough separation (and D) and I did too. I think the harder the course, the more difficult the piecing is. .... There is something that got me through it though. It was not only telling him what I needed, because that is important too. You have to tell her clearly and ask for what you want and she needs to provide that. But there is faith. I had faith it would get better.
I told myself that there was a reason we were back together, a logical reason. He showed me that and still does. I decided that I wasn't going to let my emotions control my choices anymore. I already had done that. I was going to choose my choices in life and my H had given me all the reasons to choose him again. I also told myself it would not feel this way forever. I just knew based on other hardships that emotions were fleeting and that this too shall pass. And you know what? I was totally right. My H has been back almost 4 years now! I do not have these triggers at all. I notice some things at times and other times I don't notice even at all. Either way, it doesn't get me. If I am going to end this M now, I don't want it to be because of the mistakes he made, but because he is not the right person for me today. He hasn't made those mistakes again. And he has chosen to be a good partner since he has been back. I think that is important.
Also, I am a survivor. What didn't kill me has ABSOLUTELY made me stronger. That feels awesome in a way. I like myself more now because of what I have been through and I know I can deal with anything life throws at me.
I am so sorry for your pain and suffering. It hurts so, so much. I promise you it will not feel this way forever I know that with 100% certainty. How long you can stand the pain of the triggers, only you can answer. You can walk away at any time and we all would understand and support you. You also need to tell your friends and family that you would like their support in whatever you choose.
Blu
“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.” – Nelson Mandela
Thank you Blu. I don't know what to say but thank you. I am so lonely right now, because everyone is douting me, and they have valid reasons. Rasons I want to deny but know are just as valid as my reasons to stay.
Well... Tonight I did it. i told XW about all of my feelings. It was a couple hours of arguing. Deep, painful arguing. She hurts too but part of me doesn't give a damn. I told her about all or the triggers. The memories. The pain. The shame. The destruction. All of it.
We went back and forth. She has dealt with a lot of pain too. But I completely feel that mine is more valid. Hers was due to her choices. My kid and I were VICTIMS. There is such a difference!!!
So tonight I got kicked out of XWs apartment because of this argument. Oh well. She will probably take a day to think about what I said. If not she can decide to leave.
Save yourself. Nobody is coming! BD:11/2017 Filed:12/2017 Final: 2/2018
(((Joe))) Sorry to hear about your rough night but honestly, I think it is a good thing. You needed to get it out. You needed to tell her what you went through. And she needed to hear it. She is probably hurting right now...and processing everything...she has more choices to make. Does R mean enough for her to weather the storm of emotions and stay the course? Is she strong enough? Has she changed enough? Is she willing to take responsibility? And if she isn’t...do you want to go down this road again? Time will tell. The good news is...you know you will be just fine either way. (((HUGS)))
Well... Tonight I did it. i told XW about all of my feelings. It was a couple hours of arguing. Deep, painful arguing. She hurts too but part of me doesn't give a damn. I told her about all or the triggers. The memories. The pain. The shame. The destruction. All of it.
We went back and forth. She has dealt with a lot of pain too. But I completely feel that mine is more valid. Hers was due to her choices. My kid and I were VICTIMS. There is such a difference!!!
What do you mean, "she goes back and forth"? Does she apology for the pain she's caused? Does she act haughty? Is she saying she has pain, too, as a comeback to you expressing your hurt?
Have you listened to her with your heart, or are you so full of anger and judging that you aren't hearing her? IDK, maybe she has not repented. But if she has, then she is going to suffer. Every person's pain is personal. If you feel nobody understands you........what chance do you think she has with someone understanding her? Or does that fall under the category or you not giving a damn?
Everyone runs to the LBS to comfort her/him. Nobody goes to the WS to see if they need comforting, b/c most people have the same attitude that you do........they don't give a damn, and feel the WS deserves to suffer.....and even more b/c they brought suffering to their families. The fact that you clearly identify yourself as a victim, and therefore your pain is more valid......tells me that you are not ready to spend as much time with your XW as you've been doing. If she is not remorseful, and if she's impatient about your triggers, then this relationship will have very big stumbling blocks before it gets off the ground.
As you have previously admitted, you never healed after the divorce. I don't know what she is saying in these arguments, but I think the two of you were not apart long enough, b/c you are too angry at her. One minute you see her not being good enough. and the next you say you don't want to be her plan B......which is the board's lingo from when she was in an affair. So, yeah......sounds a bit twisted there, but I think I can see. Divorce in itself was not healing. You were removed from the problem, but you didn't heal. So, it was like you spent a few months away and then walked back and it opened up the door for all those hurt emotions.
I don't think she knows what to do for you, to help you. If I were in her shoes I doubt I would know what to do when you were triggered by seeing my car or my clothes, etc. Frankly, I am more concerned about the anger you feel toward her, and you are even angry that her pain is not the same pain as you have. So, I think you need to focus on healing before you try to have a R with her.
Just in case someones thinks I am taking sides with the WW, I'm not. I'm simply trying to give you a viewpoint from the other side. Plus, that would be a viewpoint from a recovering WS, who has repented. If she has not reached that point........then you are wasting your time.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
Joe I want to start out by saying that as I have stated before i think there are a lot of red flags in the information that you share on the board but I am really hoping this works out for you. Stories like yours gives a lot of hope for the newbies coming to the board.
Originally Posted by Joe2017
Well... Tonight I did it. i told XW about all of my feelings. It was a couple hours of arguing. Deep, painful arguing.
Shouldn't you be having this discussions in MC so it can be mediated by an unbiased third party?
Originally Posted by Joe2017
She hurts too but part of me doesn't give a damn.
Has she expressed what her hurts are?
Originally Posted by Joe2017
So tonight I got kicked out of XWs apartment because of this argument.
I think you should let her cool down and wait until SHE contacts you.
One of the things I really learned in this process is the importance of being able to control your emotions. Sounds like you are really struggling with it. IMO you have the tough talks in therapy and you spend time together hanging out and having fun.
Now that I have slept on it, I can give a more detailed and thoughtful response.
First thing I want to say is that I'm not angry at my XW for the affair anymore. What I am angry with is my XWs approach towards my healing. She is way too defensive, which is her way of coping with what I say because when I get triggered by something, it causes her pain and guilt. She will probably always be this way. We have been to counseling in the past about how she deals with anger and stress, and not much ever changed.
What I meant about "back and forth" was we had a back and forth argument. She walked in on me looking in her phone. She was upset not because she was hiding anything, but because she felt like I was doing it because I don't trust her. So I told her, no I don't trust her completely yet. She said she wanted me to look through her phone and then go home, so I continued to look. She sat down with me and explained any questions that I had. We argued a while. And then I had to leave.
She has apologized many many times, and she has even called me and apologized today. What happened last night was that she got very bery upset because she felt like I would never trust her again. And if that is the case, then she says we should not be together. I understand it must be awful to always have the feeling that you are untrustworthy. But the trust process for me is going to take a lot of time, and I see how that can be frustrating.
I'm guessing this is the part where people will say I'm not ready to get into a relationship because I'm not fully healed. OK, thanks for nothing. That's not helpful. It may literally take me years to get over some of these seemingly minor things. Something the wayward will probably have a hard time understanding is how ANYTHING can remind the betrayed spouse of the affair. She had no idea that even driving her car gave me anxiety. I am not saying this out of pride, but I have made a very strong effort to face each of these triggers head on, and in the most positive way possible... But it keeps hitting me every day. Many times it's something new that I didn't know was going to hurt me. Like a smell! Or the taste of my wife's cooking! WHO COULD EVER PREDICT THAT!?!?
I am doing my best every day, but it is draining me emotionally. I have IC tomorrow. Maybe I'll get some helpful coping strategies in our session.
Thank you, everyone. Having your input here is helping me tremendously.
Last edited by Joe2017; 01/24/1903:00 PM.
Save yourself. Nobody is coming! BD:11/2017 Filed:12/2017 Final: 2/2018
To answer LH: We talked about her pain too. What causes her pain?
Summary of her words, not mine: The fact that she cheated and hurt me, our kids, and our families. It makes her feel guilty and sad. She is angry with herself for leaving me for a man who she allowed to woo her away with gas station roses. A man that manipulated her into spending all of her (our) savings and ruining her credit. She has pain from destroying her own family that she spent more than half a decade blending and building into something wonderful. She lost the home she loved. She lost good friends. She is financially ruined now. She gave up a great life for a 6 month fling with a loser.
She has personally owned all of her mistakes. Even mistakes during our marriage. She told me last night that it took her all year to forgive herself. She knows she cheated, and was once a cheater but she said she would never do it to me again because of how much pain she caused everyone. She would like her old life back, but she knows that's not possible. She knows she threw it away for the temporary feeling she got from OM.
Save yourself. Nobody is coming! BD:11/2017 Filed:12/2017 Final: 2/2018
She has dealt with a lot of pain too. But I completely feel that mine is more valid. Hers was due to her choices. My kid and I were VICTIMS. There is such a difference!!!
Honestly I can't argue with your logic here. What WAS's do is absolutely terrible and borderline inexcusable. But here comes the "but" word.... you are not in her head and she is not in yours. Her pain IS very real to her, very intense, and every bit as bad as what you've been through. She wants sympathy and validation, and she wants it from you. I fully understand why you feel she should be the one validating you, and you're right, she should be. But it goes both ways, you shouldn't expect validation while doing nothing but heaping blame on her (no matter how much she might deserve it). You've wanted to get a lot off your chest and it sounds like you did, and hopefully it makes you feel better. Now I think it would be a good time to apologize to her. I know you're probably thinking "apologize????" Yes, tell her you realize you've been ignoring her feelings while laying yours on her, thank her for listening to you, and tell her that now that you have that out of your system you are more receptive to listening to her. I wish everyone could attend Retrouvaille whether they are married or not because it's a very eye-opening experience. Loving communication comes from sharing feelings completely without judgment. You may think her feelings are right or wrong but it doesn't matter, what matters is they are her feelings and that you acknowledge her feelings whether you agree with them or not.
This is a great discussion. I can relate to all the different perspectives. In Joe's defensive, I don't know if I could have done that right after my H came back, because my emotions were too raw. Joe, you might not be there yet and that is okay! If you are not in a place where you feel genuinely sorry, then you do not have to apologize. Your lack of feeling remorse may be an indication that things are moving too fast.
If I could have done things differently, in hind sight, I would have moved much, much slower in piecing. At a snails pace. As the others have said, it is hard to work with her on the M, if you are still recovering your own wounds. In my sitch, my H left OW and then came back to me right away. My H had already tried on something different, failed at it and realized that was not what he wanted. I was more in a place of trying to keep my head above water, follow the rules here and just learning to let him go and detach. We started attending MC and this therapist was excellent. She only worked with couples, she had seen it all, and she gave great advice. She did say after several weeks that in order to work on the M, he should move back home. I don't know if that was the best idea, but he did. I think my triggers and emotions only increased with him there all the time. We also had young kids, so it made sense for our family.
We attended Retrouvaille 1.5 years later. It still felt like too much too soon! I have mixed feelings about that program in general, but I will not go there on your thread. My point is, even if you consciously choose to work on the M with her, it doesn't make the emotional pain any less. That just takes time. And the more personal growth and development you go through on your own, I think the more equipped you are to handle the stress of the M problems. Does that make sense? I developed some unhealthy coping mechs and I can see now how I held myself back from healing. Looking back, I think part of that was the pressure I felt to make it work.
I also want to say that it is okay that you feel that you were a victim and she should be more sorry. You feel that your feelings are more valid and you do not have to take that back for our sake. There is a reason you feel that way. I'll take a different spin on this than the others that perhaps will make more sense. I think you know logically, as do I, that you cannot fix the M problems if there is one perpetrator and one victim. Of course there are mistakes that you have made and before her A even started, you both most likely contributed to the break down of the M. The thing is, in your eyes, she did make the mistake and you do feel like a victim to that mistake. Just because you want to be with her and make this work, does not make your feelings any less valid. But here is the question and a question I have had to ask myself: do you want to be in a M where you feel that someone has wronged you and is now less than you? I do not mean are you right or wrong to feel this way about her or is this "fair" to her. I mean, from your perspective, in order to heal, how do you want to see her? Just think about that for a moment.
This is important to me because I (myself) do not want to be in a love relationship with someone I see as "less than." So this is not only about fairness for her, as others suggest, but also about how you want to see her. Does that make sense? I don't want to see myself as a victim any longer. And I don't want to see my H as someone that is not only a perpetrator, but as a man that has that kind of power over me. This understanding took me several years to come to, but it has been a pivotal turning point for me. I now choose to be in a M where I respect and admire the person I am with because that is a more loving R and that is what I want. For me, I have had to learn to understand him and forgive him for that to happen.
Lastly, and I think I will add this to the piecing thread, our perspectives of how many assaults he made on the M are quite different. I viewed my H as killing our M with a 1000 cuts -- every lie, deception, selfishness and hurt he caused -- and each one stung as much as the next. He does not see it that way! Yes, he feels remorse for each cut, but he did not see each as it's own intentional assault. He feels that this was one giant mistake and that these are all fragments of that, as they were all interconnected. You cannot have an A without lies and you cannot lie without hiding things and on and on .... I think I'm starting to really get it more now. Again, this has taken me years.
Be kind to yourself first. Patience and kindness. I promise you are not alone.
Blu
“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.” – Nelson Mandela
Joe, despite everything it's a dream for many of us to have a chance to reconcile with the spouse we loved so deeply. You're being given this chance so it's worth taking the time to raise questions, have doubts, and keep trying to see if you can reconcile. I had this chance too and I felt so much pain and anger when he came back, especially after I found out more about what happened. I was so stuck on getting him to admit to his mistakes and I showed so much resentment that I don't think I ever really listened to him or understood his side of the story. I was never able to re-connect with him although I still loved him. He finally gave up and took the easy way out when he met someone again, but in your case you have a woman who wants to try and it's still not too late for you. You're both in unchartered territory but any woman you meet in the future has the potential to cheat or leave. You could take a chance on some other woman and she'll end up doing the same thing in five years, although hopefully not since you've learned so much now from your current situation so you'll choose more wisely. But still, right now you have a woman that you already know well. Would it be worth going through another year or two of hardship while you try to reconcile if it means you two could be happy together for the rest of your lives after that?
