SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hey, I am suffering some serious burnout. There have been a few DM's. My apologies for not responding.

We are sleeping in separate rooms just biding time. I dont feel safe with her and get disregulated quite easily. We have the classic avoidant/anxious dynamic going on.

My wifes affair while traumatizing on its own also hit a significant childhood wound. I was raised by a single mother and woke in the middle of the night in my childhood home when I was around 10. My mother was having sex with her boyfriend and the abandonment and aloness I felt in the moment was intense. All I wanted was to be comforted by my mother. There was a little bit of that but she went back to having sex. It was horrible. My wifes affair hit that wound almost perfectly.

The idea of being poor and alone seems worse. I know that makes no sense to a lot of you but I haven't known a healthy relationship.

The hard truth is I am depressed and suffering from fatigue. It's not good.

I dont know what healing looks like even if I get there. What should I expect from her. Its been a long time.

[This message edited by bedman at 4:16 AM, Wednesday, October 21st]

Have you seen a counselor to help you deal with the pain and aftermath of infidelity?

This shit is hard when you aren't built for it.

I don't think anyone is "built" for it.

People who do handle (as in built for it) - are experienced and/or trained. (IC)

Then I want to know if you are still where you have been for a while is because you won't give up or make changes in yourself that will FORCE changes in your relationship?

There is no way you can make someone love you. Give that some thought.

Depending on your definition of "broke" - some are broke for a short period of time. Others - decades. Infidelity is a gift that never goes away. -a memory for life-

Might do you some good to get a book to study:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. (Author)

didn't kill the memories for me - but I learned to deal with them

The memories you have (Diary contents) - er, well, uh? - I'm thinking you are still operating on wishes.

Time to move on?

Edit? Thinking a bit more - Ya, you should move on - get rid of the Albatross!

[This message edited by Hippo16 at 5:19 AM, Wednesday, July 22nd]

Then welcome back, not to the forums as it’s likely despair driving you here, but welcome back to the impulse to reclaim your center and peace.

What’s your dominant emotion right now, the ones who get clogged in you and stay day and night hanging like clouds?

What is your instinct telling you about her, can you name what feeling tells you she never has her heart in it?

You have been heard

Sending you support Bedman.

Bedman,
Sounds like a festering wound that still comes to the surface now and again. You need to excise that. Therapy can help if you find a therapist who is trained in trauma. Because that is what is happening — this is like PTSD from a horrible trauma. It doesn’t just go away, as you have experienced. Please seek some help here. Some find that EMDR helps, I found some alternative therapies that worked. Talk therapy helps - just being able to have a safe space to FEEL all those bottled up festering feelings. Online therapy works for some as well - try a few options and see what works for you.

And none of us are built for it or know how to handle it. We do the best we can at the time with the resources and history that we have. Don’t consider yourself an idiot. Consider yourself human.

I recommend you go to the Separation/Divorce forum and read the pinned post on fear vs reality. That forum is filled with people who went through what you are going through and they all made it to the other side. And find things pretty good when they got there. It’s no fun, and painful and scary, but you can do it, and you can thrive.

But get help to heal those wounds. You deserve a future without those still festering.

Sending strength.

I looked at one of your earliest threads and it appears you (more your WW) were off to a very rough start. I didn't do a deep dive, but this was your final post in a thread from 2017 when you discovered her diary, 17 months from your d day.

Yeah! I am doing all the work to end this marriage and she just sits there saying well I can't stop him. What's the use. Good riddance.

I also told her Wednesday that 50-70% effort wouldn't do it or 80% if that's how she defines it. Her respose was something like I am not a bad person I just did a bad thing. I am not sure what she meant maybe it was justifying her lack of total effort that if the affair was just a bad thing it allows her to justify her less than full effort.

That's not a good place to be at almost a year and a half removed from d day. Obviously you didn't get divorced, but did things continue like that for the last 8 or 9 years?

bumped at OP request.