SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello everyone of SI.
Recap of my story: with my HS sweetheart for 15 years, married for 3. I confessed an A from 13 years ago. He was abusive and confessed infidelities as well.
It has been 8 months to the day since our separation, 3 months since filing.
I spent 5 months in a trauma facility, and now 3 months in twice weekly therapy to explore my traumas, my infidelity, my character flaws, my values, and my relationship.
I don’t really have a family, but my exH’s family is aware of everything and has been supportive and kind. My friends, who are also aware of everything, are supporting me on my journey of self improvement. I share all my thoughts and feelings with friends of strong morals to check myself constantly, which has been helpful.
I spend a lot of time reading, working, and knitting. The days are long. I always miss my exH, it will be a very long healing journey.

I wanted to bring one thing here, to gauge some thoughts- I discussed this with my therapists, but I have gained so much insight from the people here that I wanted some input.

I’m exploring my "core wounds" and how they affect my thoughts and fears. One of my major core wounds was feeling like I’m not good enough, and being abandoned/rejected. (FOO: only child to abusive/alcoholic/addict mother and neglectful father. Mother left our family when I was 8, drank herself to near death when I was 12. I went to live with father. SA’d at 14, also SA’d by AP during first 2 interactions).
As I reflect on my relationship and marriage, I am having trouble feeling hurt by his cheating. I feel extreme pain, guilt, and shame over my own infidelity, and I feel very hurt when I think of the abuse/threats/coercion I experienced in our marriage, but the cheating does not bring up a lot of emotion for me.
At first, I thought it is because I feel so much guilt over my own infidelity it would be hypocritical to be upset over his. But as I reflect more, I realize why: he was never going to leave me, and that is still such a core fear of mine.
Whenever he was unfaithful, it was only to get validation/pleasure. He never had very involved/emotional infidelities, and he never had any intention of leaving me. When we were attempting R, I even thought to myself "if he cheats again it wouldn’t bother me that much, as long as he stays".
I assume everyone in my life with reject and abandon me. He was the one constant person I fully believed never would. Even after I confessed my A, he wanted R.
Any disrespect or unkindness I received from him didn’t hurt me because I felt secure in knowing he would never leave me. If I was with a man that was respectful, kind, and faithful, then I believe he would eventually leave me because I believe I am "not enough". But my husband, he relied on me financially, we shared 15 years together, and we had a deep trauma-bonded attachment. We both come from broken homes, and found a family in each other.

I realize there are so many issues I need to work through based on everything I just said, but I wanted to share here. If you read all of that, thank you.

You have been heard.

Resolve your own issues this is good, they are usually low self worth and people pleasing leading to cheating.

but also don’t neglect the betrayal trauma wounds, you have been betrayed and no matter what your low self worth inside voice whispers about, that "you deserved it", it’s still the same lie.

Your husband was not good, he betrayed you. You need to accept this truth like you need to accept what you have done.

That wound will always hurt more and will mess you up badly if you rugsweep it.
The good news is that you can heal completely from it because you divorced your cheating husband.
I can only hope it will help you to heal your own issues faster.

Then keep this in mind: you are enough, you are lovable, you didn’t deserve to be betrayed. The voices whispering otherwise are a reflection of the "cheater mindset" take distance from them and start to see them for what they are.

You can heal and find real happiness, not just trauma bonding

That seems reasonable to me as an explanation for understanding.

I also have SA in my background- and it caused me to disassociate love from sex for a fair amount of my life. It taught me that sex is transactional, and not about the value that you see in that other person.

So I can understand how you can look at the basis of what he did to not be personally about you.

I also think it taught me to use my sexuality in a way that sometimes was manipulative. Or at other times ridiculously overt as a way to impress or get attention.

I am joy saying these things are true for you at all- just giving examples of how SA can cause sex to be about something else than loving intimacy.

The other thing that I learned is that it also was one of many things that confused boundaries for me. Oh, you molested me? Okay. There was no reflecting on the various ways it was damaging or the anger I should have felt in that violation. I think it goes hand in hand with parental emotional neglect. First, that neglect makes us susceptible to predators. They sense it. Second, the neglect itself makes any attention someone shows us as more powerful.

That was a big draw in my affair, the reversion to these places where I had unknowingly rooted my self as who I was and what I was worth in many ways- the source of my original toxic shame, the thing that made me "bad" and so being in that role felt like the truth in some ways.

Reengineering that to see myself as inherently good while battling the damage that now I can blame no one but myself for was something like feeling around in the darkness to locate an unidentified object. However, as I spent the time and effort, certain things came into focus one piece at a time and now I can see it as the bigger picture.

You suffered way more trauma and damage in your foo than me. I had an emotionally immature mother who may or may not have a personality disorder, but she didn’t so much as drink. I think I saw her drink beer one time in my entire life. So my situation was more garden variety neglect and emotional abuse. I am glad you are doing this digging because I can see that you also are no longer digging around in the darkness searching for the big correlations. That’s huge because people like us bury a lot of it, excuse a lot of it. Great work! Thank you for staying with us and sharing. Even if you do not get many responses, there are may people who read here and never post.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:19 PM, Friday, April 10th]

Thank you so much for your responses and insights.

Hikingout, your insights are always spot on and deeply appreciated. I am grateful you are here and sharing your wisdom earned through so much self reflection.

How do you stand now a week after emotionally?

Specifically, are you beginning to feel hurt to any extent about having been betrayed, can you allow yourself to respect your attachment wound?

In the emotional language, feel not rationalization

You mention that he cheated to get validation.
I challenge you to contemplate why you cheated. I’m fairly certain that too was about validation…

Not saying this in any discouraging way. In fact – I think understanding why we need validation and what is "healthy" validation is a key factor in becoming a better person.

I think your issues on having a hard time feeling pain about his infidelities might be connected to the situation where you have realized how ill-equipped you both were to be committed to a serious marriage…
Sounds like a troubled childhood with no clear emotional role-model for what family life should be, and possibly a HS sweetheart seen as the quickest route out of THAT situation.

Focus on self-healing…
If you are surrounded by friends who you consider having high moral standards that they apply to themselves – then keep in mind there is a reason they want you as a friend. You could find healthy validation that you are on the right path through that.

What helped me in therapy was changing 'Why' into 'What did I hope to get from _____?' The next questions included:

Was that still something I wanted?

Were there healthy ways to get it?

Was I willing to do the work to switch to healthy ways?

If I wasn't willing to do the work to heal myself fully, what was I willing to do to get healthier than I was?

I recommend at least trying out that approach. I mean: even if you get a good answer to 'why,' you then have to answer, 'What am I going to do about it?' If you ask that question early, you may not need to spend time on 'Why?'

*****

I've written that I've gone through several 'bouts/rounds' of therapy. The reason I started, stopped, and started again is that I realized I had more work to do after reaching the goals I started an effort, but I wasn't ready to go further - to do work on the next problem I saw - at that time.

So I enjoyed what I did accomplish and went back into therapy when a problem was 1) holding me back and 2) I didn't think I could solve it without guidance.

My therapists all were on board with that approach.

I'll add that I was really less flighty than this looks. I was doing great with a few therapists, but one moved, a couple stayed in place but I moved, and one died. (The last one was supercool. Not a college grad, he got his Ph.D. from his work on the Bomb. He retired and became a highly respected and much mourned counselor. Man, I wish he had been available on my 2010 d-day. I know what he was doing on D-Day.)

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:19 PM, Monday, April 13th]