How Do You Cope After an Affair?

I know Husband needs to blog more, he's sick with a sinus infection and he works some pretty crappy hours which doesn't leave a lot of energy for blogging. But he's beginning to see that our blog is helpful to some people.

More than anything he wants to start a local support group for people. I think that would be great however I'm just not ready to out myself fully yet. I live in a pretty small town and all of the yuck is still very fresh. Besides, neither of us have any time at all so I don't know how we'd manage to squeeze one more thing into our hectic and crazy life.

So I thought I'd try to blog a little more. And I was thinking about some coping mechanisms I used after the discovery. First off, I really detest coping. To me coping means you sort of give up and make due with your lot in life and stop trying to change it. It seems so helpless.

So imagine how hard it was for me to realize I did something I couldn't change! I couldn't take it back or make it right. That had NEVER happened to me. It drove me insane with grief and fear. So I had to cope.

I wrote before that I tried hard to remake myself after the discovery. That was one way I tried coping. I worked hard on getting healthy. something I'd needed to do for the last ten years. I'd gotten really fat in college. I started running shortly after I "met" the Other, but after the discovery I worked harder on myself and started a weight loss program. Since I couldn't make what I did go away I tried to make the body that did it go away. Does that make sense?

The only way I could think to cope with this was to become a different person than the one who did the Big Bad. I really started to deconstruct myself and I think I realized something really important.

My counselor talked about how I had taken my heart offline after my first love and I broke up. I think he was dead right, and I think I stopped growing since that time. I feel like I slept walked through the years after, not living but just existing and content but never truly happy.

When Husband fought for me and my eyes were open suddenly and I fell in love with him, my heart came back online. I was then able to trace back and see the little hurts and the old wounds that led me to who I became. A person with two parts, the light and the dark. I had let the dark win out because it seemed stronger, but it wasn't. It was just angrier. Anger seems that way but its just a secondary emotion to something deep and rotten. Now the light has won!

Ok, I'm totally babbling. So anyway, I coped. I remade and I listened to a hell of a lot of new music. I made soundtracks for Husband and I at each stage of our journey. We had Soul Kissing-which was the few months after the discovery and recovery where we were in a honeymoon sort of state. Then there was Coming Through the Woods-as we struggled through all the yuck we were dealing with. Then Outside the Blastzone-for after we made it through the worst of the muck. And now I have a soundtrack for my fiction pieces I work on because he and I are mostly good. :)

When I go through each soundtrack it takes me back to all those emotions I felt during each stage. Its sometimes painful but sometimes very good. It helps me see what we've come through and how we've won. Its healing and reinforcing.

Today has been a long day, Spring is a long time coming and Husband is sick. I have a baby growing in me that makes me sick all day long and two children who like to not be fully potty trained even though they should be... But tonight is a good night and today was a great day because I didn't have to be alone. Husband and I survived and are better and stronger for it, and you can do it too.

Believe me when I say this-I never thought I'd love my husband. I married him as a friend figuring that I'd never love anyone other than my first love. But something happened the day after the discovery while we sat in our counselors office, and I can only say that I was touched by a miracle and so was Husband. And I am so truly thankful for that.