Missing the Other: Life After the Discovery

One of my readers wrote me to ask me if I ever missed my Other and if so, what did I do. Below is my answer to her, but I'd really appreciate responses here from anyone who might have more applicable advice. Because, unfortunately, I don't know how far my answer to her question will take her.

Hello,

I can answer this but I don't know if I'm the best person to. The answer is, magically and inexplicably, no-I never missed my Other. I was afraid the missing would come, terrified really, but it never did. And this is not because I'm anyone special or have magnificent control over my mind, but because everything I could have missed at all about him was easily taken care of and represented in my husband.

I don't know how much of my blog you read, but if you read this post you'll see what I mean. In there I do my best to describe the moment when suddenly everything changed.

I was musing with husband about this the other day. We have always both believed we were meant to be together, but when we met we were both sort of broken in different ways. The people who met weren't the people who were ultimately meant to be together. I was supposed to be a girl who loved him desperately and stood with him as a strong partner tied together with a common passion and purpose. He was to be a man who was strong and unbreakable yet loving and kind. Neither of us were this. I think we both craved the thing we thought we were meant to have.

So in the therapists office, I think there was a huge inner change in my husband and I think the real me felt the real him in that moment. I don't know any other way to explain how I would be looking at him and suddenly feel like a veil had been lifted off my eyes and fall in love with him right then. And he was able to look at me and see that suddenly I did love him for real-and see it in my eyes in a way he never saw there before.

So no, I never had a moment of missing the Other. But that is only because my husband and I became what the other needed. If we had not, if we hadn't gone to counseling and powered through just on will alone without changing the things about us that were broken-our 11 years of bad habits and quarrels, I think it would have been very different.

And that is what I think the key is. What ever you might miss about the Other is something you really might be missing from your spouse. Dissect that and see what you can come up with and then work with your husband so both of you can become what you were meant to be to each other.

Maybe that was more than what you were looking for. I certainly don't think you're alone in missing him-so don't feel alone in this. I think my case is fairly unique and I thank god every day for this blessing.

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.

You're Not Alone in Your Recovery from Adultery

Every week I get more and more emails from men and women trying to survive this process of recovery from adultry. You are not alone and you all have experiences and support to offer to each other. If I could get you all in a room together I can just imagine the help and healing that might happen. In fact one of my emailers who has been struggling with breaking off an affair has found help through chatting with a husband who was cheated on. We could all help each other.

If you feel brave, leave a comment here-discuss what is happening with you. If you feel not so brave make an alias and do it anyway :). Or go to the Support board linked in the sidebar. Its not that active but I think that is in part because we hide so much from what we did.

I started this blog to face what I did, I called it Peering Into Darkness at first, but gradually felt like it was instead leading me to the light.

If you're feeling REALLY brave, write your own blog and let me know (you can still have an alias).

And as always I invite people to be guest bloggers here.

So reach out to one another-help each other.

A Little Epiphany

Lately I've been having the old yuck thoughts returning to me. The crippling guilt, the worry, the fear that the Other will somehow pop back into my world and turn it upside down. He does know where I live, I seriously can't wait to move just to have that little barrier there.

So I've been struggling and not sure why suddenly this struggle seems harder, why the thoughts are coming more frequently again. After some dissecting these were the things I figured out.

1. We got cable and I have been watching TV more. TV leads to pointless and meaningless distraction. In my defense I have wicked morning sickness all day long, but at night its the worse. And sometimes all I can do is just lay on the couch and moan. I can't help that.

2. I haven't been writing creatively or blogging because of feeling sick and being tired.

I wasn't sure which of these things was the culprit or if I was being stupid and just looking for excuse to explain away my flaw and weakness.

But then on Saturday night I felt pretty decent so I downloaded some tunes and made a play list for the novel I'm working on and really spent some time editing and writing. And I'll tell you what, I felt amazing the whole next day. I realized around 5pm that I hadn't had a single bad thought that whole night.

So my conclusion is, both. The distraction of the mindless television doesn't help my inner thoughts and inner peace or my connection with my husband. And my writing gives me a wonderful creative outlet that allows me to channel a lot of my thoughts and feelings into characters and events.

So what helps you? Do you know? If you don't know what can fight off those yucky demons chasing your thoughts perhaps you should look into doing something expressive and creative. Its a wonderful outlet.

Take it easy and stay strong everyone!

Constant Vigilance!

Constant Vigilance...the cry of Mad Eye Moody from the Harry Potter series always rings in my head when it comes to thinking about my marriage after the affair. Mad Eye is warning about keeping your awareness of the enemy. In my marriage I am reminding myself that same thing. Distraction is my enemy.

I've been distracted a bit lately. I like to blame a fresh bout of mornings sickness (yes, we went and got knocked up, a few months earlier than we had planned, but we're very happy) and TV. Before recently we had no TV but I got tired of getting no signal on the converter box so we sprung for basic cable. And now, while laying sick on the couch, instead of talking to Husband I am vegging out. Not good.

During this same time I have found myself going back to the dark place of fear and self hatred that I was in before healing from what happened. The thoughts were coming at me more frequently and I felt very attacked. I would actually swear at the thoughts and tell them "shut up you assholes" lol. That works, seriously. Yell or talk to keep those bad thoughts away.

But I know that I'm more vaulnerable to the attacks because I am weak in my relationship. Not that we aren't strong and happy, just that we are both stressed and distracted and have not had any serious one on one time. So I turned off the TV and instead of vegging out on the couch we got into bed and my husband read aloud to me. That was so much more enjoyable.

So-that is my lesson for today. Constant Vigilance! Always look for that enemy in your marriage and then take steps to neutralize it.

Trust after an Affair: Part I

Trust is a huge huge thing in any relationship. Especially when you live with someone day in and out, sharing your lives with each other.

How do you rebuild trust after you've cheated on your partner? And how do you even learn to trust yourself?

If you were the offending spouse, which I was, I think its important to answer all the questions honestly and do your best to be an open book. But even more important than that is being very honest with your feelings. Things I would think and feel but keep silent about before, I made a point to tell my husband. I tried my best to be totally open for him as much as I could be, no matter how uncomfortable I was.

And I also had to understand that he couldn't just trust me over night. When he checked my phone records or asked me strange questions, I understood and answered without getting angry. It makes sense for him to have questions. Our counselor said from the beginning, "trust but verify".

This meant for Husband to put his trust in me (and in God too), but to also verify that I was living up to that trust. This gave him peace of mind and each time he'd check up on me and see that there was nothing to find, he verified that I was being trust worthy and he began to trust me more.

I think trust building is extremely important, work together with a counselor to get that back and start rebuilding your relationship.

Remaking You After the Affair

The first ten years of my marriage my husband was fond of saying that I never "changed" there was never anything I had to work on or fix. I thought I was perfect. That was his perception, however I knew I was far from perfect, but the only thing I could imagine that I needed to work on was my housekeeping ability. They are lacking in a big way.

I don't blame him for being frustrated all those years, I think he felt very nit picked.

He doesn't say that to me anymore however.

After the affair we were both so broken that we had to completely rebuild ourselves. Husband had some massive changes overnight. Things unexplainable that were suddenly different about him. For instance he now tolerated and enjoyed spicy food now, he began writing poetry (this is a guy who'd never written creatively in his life) and intimacy was so completetly different. I'm not going to get into the sex stuff right now, but Husband is planning a post about Sex and Intimacy after the affair in the future.

But what I'm getting at is that very strange things were suddenly different about him, and then there were very large personality changes as well. I think his battling for his life (essentially) suddenly made him an incredibly strong and self respecting man. Something he had never acheived before.

Me, well I felt very much like I had spun a chrysalis around my tainted body and broken spirit and slept. The first few weeks after the discovery it was all I could do to keep my eyes open at night. I was so thoroughly exhausted I could only imagine all the effort I had put into my 10 years of hiding my true feelings and the 6 months of lying had taken a lot more effort than I imagined.

Husband carried me through those months afterwards and kept the reality of what I did from crushing me completly. It seems very odd that he would protect me so much, especially when he was hurting so much. But protection is what I had craved our whole marriage and I think he thought it was now his duty. It gave him something to do during the recovery.

Me, well I used what happened to get in better shape. I was a good deal overweight which led to a lot of self loathing. I wanted to change as much of me as I could. I wanted to be a different person. And that was my first focus, I wanted to have a different body, one that had never been seen by another person outside my husband. I also started writing and reading more and became active with service projects in the community. Things I had always loved but let slide into the background.

And we remade ourselves as a couple. First and foremost we turned off the TV and spent our evenings talking, writing together and reading aloud to each other when we didn't want to process anymore.

And of course all of this made us better parents.

Those first 6-8 months after the affair were the hardest. There was much pain and sadness from Husband and a lot of fear and horror from me. But as time moved by the thoughts come less, the happiness more frequent and we healed.

Alone or Not?

ACK! Last night I'm sitting all alone watching Nancy Drew. I figure I'd be safe with Nancy Drew, nothing to sneak up and remind me of the Big Bad or the other. Its a movie about a teen detective. What could it possibly hold that would mirror something in my past?

Generally I wouldn't be trying to hide from it so much except during this Christmas shopping season I have become listless and depressed and lonely...which leads to battling thoughts.

So, I'm watching Nancy Drew and what happens? A stupid song that was a memory making song from the Other-jumps out at me and plays for a painfully long time. Stupid movie. Two different times it played!

And suddenly I'm thinking about the Other and the Big Bad and all the junk that comes with it. And I'm thinking about how lonely I am right now. How alone I am and have been since Thanksgiving and I find myself getting scared. I find myself thinking, What if I do it again? What if I'm like one of those cereal adulterers? And that thought scares the shit out of me. I never feel safe.

If there is one thing I've learned, its that anyone is capable of adultery. Even you. You may not think so, you think you'd never stoop to something like that...but so did I. And if I did it once, if I was wrong about the core and substance of who I was, I could be wrong again. Right?

WRONG! Those thoughts are from the enemy and cause me to doubt myself and my faith. My Sage would tell me that those thoughts are me fighting the flesh and "trying" to be good. Not giving it up to God and trusting him to protect me and fight with me against the evil and harm in the world. And it will never happen again because now I fight with more than just my will, but with God.

And more importantly, I have come through this process, have survived and grown stronger than I ever have been. I will feel the warning of the things that led me to do what I did-and I will talk to Husband about them if they pop up so we can fix them. I'm not alone anymore. My husband is with me and beside me in a way he never had been before. I am not alone.

So no matter how lonely I feel, I am never alone. I have God and my Husband with me always.

And you're not alone, because you have me and every other person who has ever gone through this, with you. Our pain and triumph and joy are out there swirling around...we are not alone in this.

Holidays After an Affair

Just wanted to let you all know that I'm thinking about you. Holidays can be tough after an affair, you may have some bad memories, old memories or facing people who know about the Big Bad. Just wanted you to know I'm praying for you and to hang in there.

If yucky thoughts come at you-push them out. My therapist says, "lots of people come knock at your door, but you don't have to let them come in and dwell inside." So, acknowledge it and then tell them, "no thank you" and close that door-move on.

Another wise person said to stop unwanted thoughts-speak aloud. I find that works. Even if you are yelling at the thoughts to get back-just talking and making sound seems to cut the thought off. Maybe try singing a little tune to banish it.

So take care, be merry and keep on working on your marriage. Seek help, seek support and care for yourself.

Merry Christmas all!

Should I Kill Myself Over My Adultery?

I don't know about you, but when I saw this search term in my blog stats, I gasped aloud. I thought frantically "Of course you shouldn't kill yourself!" and wondered if there was any way to reach out to the poor soul who thought a Google search might help them decide whether life would be worth living.

This person did happen upon my blog and I can only pray they found some words here to help them decide life was indeed worth living.

But these suicidal thoughts are not a surprise to me. During my moments of discovery I remember clearly staring into the green rocky water...thinking about how I'd have to jump and which spots I could wedge my body between so I couldn't be rescued. I wanted to jump so badly..but I didn't. And of course there was the cutting before that. So, I get it.

But I also know that there is life after an affair. Regardless of whether or not your marriage survives it, there is still life. The Big Bad of an affair will completely throw your life into turmoil. You'll feel alone and scared. Its very raw and it will break you down. But this process of breaking you down gives you the opportunity to rebuild yourself and becomes something new.

You have a chance to start all over again, in a marriage or as a single person learning about yourself all over again. For the still marrieds, this time can be very much like a honeymoon phase, mine indeed was. But I expected it to be a phase and was prepared, as much as I could be, for the outbursts and hurt that still came. But our honeymoon lasted a few months and we spent a lot of time talking, loving and caring for each other. There was a lot of work done and foundation started in those months so when the hard work came we had something stable already started. One thing I'm happiest for is the week Husband and I took off to spend together a few weeks after the discovery. It was just about he and I, something we hadn't had in years, and it made all the difference to our healing.

For the no longer marrieds, it can be a new and exciting time to get to know you. To deconstruct your personality and relationship and really learn what happened and what you want after your your healing process is finished.

Both groups really need some professional help through this. There is nothing like having a guide to lead you through the dark of the forest.

And if you can't afford a guide, then perhaps you'll be able to find some solace here, or in our online message board. Because life is still worth living.

800 LB Gorrilla..

Thats what I feel is sitting in the corner staring at me with a little knowing smirk on his face. Its that heaviness that you feel when someone starts talking about adultery. Admonishing someone they know who is carrying on some illicit affair. And all you can do is sit there quietly trying not to be too obvious with your discomfort.

This is sometimes how I feel in the presence of my sisters. Not many people know about the Big Bad, but during the discovery I texted one of my sisters, nearly giving her a heart attack while she was driving.

Apparently they all knew something was going on, but weren't sure what. Anyway, I told her to just tell everyone about it for me...I was still working on an exit strategy, I was pretty sure Husband and I would be over and I would somehow end up being with the Other.

Her response was a big fat no, she wasn't telling anyone and no one needed to know. Then she told me to go see a counselor she knew. The best advice I've ever had and what saved my marriage.

Anyway...during the discovery, Husband broke two very old chairs that had belonged to my mother and at some point I had to explain what happened. So, I told her vaguely, while crying, about what happened. I didn't give details, just a little bit. At this time she was at another sisters house. So, in my head, I count 2 siblings and my mother who I know for sure knows.

But my sisters talk. A lot. And I know things about them they don't think I know because someone else told me. So I'm never quite certain who knows. And thats when the Gorilla sometimes comes.

When the topic comes up about someone having an affair all I can do is try to seem engaged and think of a clever way to change the topic. I can't join in their disgusted admonitions and I can't show my sympathy to the betrayer (of course the betrayed gets the well deserved sympathy).

(Mea Culpa) Since the Big Bad I have such a different perspective on this topic. I belonged to the outraged masses who condemned such awful behavior... but now I have sympathy for the betrayer because I understand the turmoil and self loathing and addiction they feel. Hating and loving everything, feeling things they feel they don't deserve to feel, not even knowing what to pray. During my awful months all I could do was pray that God's will be done. I didn't know what else to pray. Its in my nature to be a peacemaker, Swiss...to stick up for the person that is being raked across the coals. But having been in the drivers seat of Adultery...I just sit silently and listen. I can't bring myself to say anything.

So here I am, over a year later, and sometimes I feel intensely uncomfortable. I expect it sometimes, like when I'll see my Husband's best friend for the first time and wonder if he and his wife are thinking about what I did the whole time. And sometimes it'll come out of the blue like when the sister I did tell talks about her crazy whore ex-boss's numerous trysts... But I know this will eventually go away.

And, in the meantime, since it is the holiday seasons and we can't help be around friends and family that may know...all you can do is hold the thoughts back. Fight them, don't think and wonder, just be. We are all human and we make mistakes. All we can do is to pray for forgiveness and work at forgiving ourselves. As time passes I'm am certain it gets easier. Its already gotten easier for me.

So whats the best way to kill that Gorilla? Perhaps humor? Like when someone who knows talks about a friend's awful affair, you could fake outrage and declare how you could never do such a thing...then laugh.... That may not go over very well, but I bet it would sure make someone aside from you uncomfortable.

Oh well, I have no real answers. Chances are, if they are thinking about what you did while talking about their friend's affair, they are probably feeling just as uncomfortable as you and trying to think of a cleaver yet subtle exit strategy. Like when you call someone crazy while sitting next to your bi-polar co-worker.

Good luck with your Gorilla!