Tag: reconciliation

Agitation or fear (or both)?

Things are happening this week that have me on edge.

First, Valentine’s Day. Screw that this year. Handsome will get lovely cards from the kids, but not from me. I’ve told him not to get me anything (and assured him it wasn’t a test… that I truly want nothing). Maybe next year or down the road things will be different.

Next, later in the week we are heading to our summer home in New England. We had some pipes freeze there and need to attend to that damage. It will be my first time in the house since learning that he spent a yard-work weekend alone there last May sexting the Whore the entire time. Hundreds of texts and a bunch of photos and videos. That house has always been my happy place and my safe haven – since before I got together with Handsome – and I’m scared I won’t be able to see it in that light any longer. Part of me may actually be glad some of it needs to be torn apart, rebuilt, and redone as it might get rid of the taint from what he did there. (As I write that it sounds crazy to me and yet it makes perfect sense at the same time.) The church where we got married is nearby too. I’m not sure how I’ll deal with seeing that.

Finally, on Friday we have our first affair recovery session with Brian from Beyond Affairs.  I’ve been anxiously awaiting this for a few weeks, but now that it’s upon us, I’m nervous. I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, but I do want it to go well. I want Handsome and I both to feel like it will be helpful. I have no reason to believe that anything other than that will happen, but I’m unsettled about it nonetheless. In short, it’s something new added to the “new normal” of our life, and at this point new=scary.

I expect it will be that way for many months.

Two months post DDay – a long, strange trip

Some days, I truly wonder if I’m losing my mind. If I manage to sleep, which is no sure thing, I might actually awake and have a brief, fleeting moment where I forget. I forget for a nanosecond what Handsome did. In that moment my life is like it was pre-DDay, and it feels safe and comforting. Then reality flashes in and I wonder if I had a bad dream. A split second later I realize it’s all too real and the feeling of profound loss washes over me and consumes me in an instant.

Two months ago, I was a certifiable wreck. I have no idea how I made it through a two week family vacation or Christmas. Sadly, the good times with my mom and kids among those days are such a blur they are lost to me…one more casualty of Handsome’s infidelity.

I’d love to write here that I’m getting better. Some days I feel as if I am. Not every day has been 100% awful. The affair is clearly over. Handsome started individual counseling, is working hard at it and has dialed back his drinking significantly. He is doing a good job controlling his angry outbursts. He tries in his own somewhat clumsy way to talk to me about what happened. We start marriage counseling next week. He tells me multiple times a day that he loves me. (I mostly believe he thinks he loves me, but I am very uncertain whether he is actually in love with me. How could he be if he did this awful thing?) We have had days where we laughed, had fun, had great sex (hysterical bonding!), and/ or talked about our future as if it was a certainty.

And yet on other days there is no light in the world and the very sight of him, or the sound of his voice, is both repulsive and hurtful to me. I spend days with tears dripping out of my eyes at work (it’s not exactly crying… tears just flow forth for hours on end… WTF?), and the waves of grief that wash over me seem never ending. I think of the deliberate deception (the burner phone), the duration of  his involvement with the Whore (years), how he made believe he was being a good husband and a good dad, and generally how he flitted around our home acting like nothing was going on when he was actively destroying our marriage and our family. It sickens me.

I’m tired of the emotional seesaw. I want to get off. I didn’t get on willingly or of my own volition. I was dragged onto it by the narcissism and selfishness of the person I love (loved?) most in the world. That realization alone is devastating. While I have good days and bad, every single day I’m aware of what Handsome did. It is in my head permanently. The mantra running through my mind is “He did this to me. To us.” It was intentional, disrespectful, disgusting, and dishonest. Two months in, I’m still not certain how to come to terms with that.