Symptoms of Affair Withdrawal Please EXPLAIN!

Just Tired Of It All · 04-15-2012, 04:28 PM

WOW.. this is so HELPFUL..

I tried to picture it, I tried to understand, I tried to feel compassionate for my WS.

But I had been looking at it all wrong, basicially I got focused on my own feelings of rage, uncertainty, shock, agitation, fear, pain, depression and confusion. And it was the mixture of feelings, the sense of confusion and limbo. That I have and still at times do feel left me to think that his reflection on our marriage,or issues, his infidelity was trivial in comparison to my own.. you have helped me to begin to understand what I was so desperatly wanting to.

You hit a big issue I really was trying to grasp and that when you stated "I felt like there was no way I'd ever be forgiven or "be able to fix this" it was such a gigantic mess" my husband has stated this to me before. He felt as thou he would be " walking on egg shells for the rest of his life and that I would never really forgive him or beleive him when he says he truely only ever loved me that he never loved her" that I will hold it against him forever and he was afraid that I will never be able to truely love or respect him again. And this is on thing he was afraid of and this is one of the main reason he was on the fence about trying to save our marriage at the start. I feel that somtimes, still he feels this, he somtimes will say it, not hatefully, but with a look of agony in his eyes. So after reading all of you guys post and really helping ME to come to some understanding, it seems that the WS has the in some aspects, real fears,mixture of feelings, the sense of confusion and limbo, and the mistrust as BS, BUT DIFFRENT.

It is -if I am comprehending correctly- and I think I am, the thouts and feeling are diffent between the WS and the BS, it is about the A and our struggles and our symptom of other problems in the marriage, and we both want the same outcome with a renewed and strengthened marriage. But we both have our own things to conquer and overcome..

This is helping me a WHOLE lot and I am so THANKFUL and APPRECIATIVE that you all will take your time a share your own feeling, thouts and emotions you have and are having to go thru, It puts alot of things I was trying to comperhend into percpective, In order for me to find the strength and let go of my own hang-ups I really had this need to try to understand my husband, the fog, and his struggles his fears and his confussion as well, I know my own, but I couldnt fathom his or understand for that matter because I am the BS, I have not been on the side of the Ws, so I had no idea the truth of there own stuggles.

Oh, he has tried to tell me, but I think that a BS gets so deep into there own emotions that we think, what the heck, how does he feel that way there is no way.. And for a spouse, we never knew that person, we only know of the person they were before the Affair, and like it changed us, it has in a sense changed the Ws to.. We dont see that, we dont understand it, maybe to some level we just dont want to, we want to hold on the the "way they were before" or image of our spouse the morals, the values, the feelings. The thouts about how we preceived them and veiwed them before they broke our trust, the boundaries that was set at the moment you said I do that you felt you need in your marriage in order to stay in the marriage an unspoken love of trust-commentment I guess I would say.

It seemed like there were some essentials I thout was a given, like blaming the third party, why dont they hate them despies them, why dont he despise his-self, why does he not deserve heartache, how can he really be that down, he wanted to work on our marriage, why does the "fog" get to be an excuse. Is this "fog" even real, I know the stuff I am going thru is real, but there is no way he can feel as much heartache as me, there is no way he can even come close to my sense of loss..he made a promise to me many years ago, does that not even play into the equation here.. Its ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.... (see my point) I got to thinking about it, and decided that me not understand the true things he is going won't change anything unless I make the effort like he to understand....

For the most part, my H isn't all that good at sharing things that are most important to them or the hurt or what he precieves a weakness. He probably isn't the rare exception to this rule. But I have seen him try to take down his wall, I didnt understand.

It's one thing to let him know that I am hurt by this (we both need undertand the actions and fears I needed to understand the "fog" from the WS veiw in order for me to understand and to work as hard as I can to keep the anger out of my voice and to comprehend his emotions. ). It's something else entirely to pour more poison into the process than is already there.

I perceived it the way I wanted to.. And you all are helping me Tremedously.. THANK YOU SO MUCH...

Just Tired Of It All · 04-15-2012, 05:17 PM

"The whole timeline thing and the things the wayward spouse feels ....this is just SO helpful to understand. Thank you. Details are helpful. Maybe doesn't seem like it would be, but it makes me see it can be worked through.

Would be helpful to know if anything your BS did helped or hurt. "

Yes yes yes and did I say YES.. I agree.. and great question... I love this site and the people.. they are saving so many from the heck of this stupid painful agony... And possibly god willing save some marriages.. THANK YOU ALL

TBT · 04-15-2012, 05:48 PM

Your open and honest posts help me to start to let go of the bitterness in my heart.Thank you all and Morrigan I hope your feeling better.You definitely did a mitzvah today.

Affaircare · 04-15-2012, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Just Tired Of It All

"...Would be helpful to know if anything your BS did helped or hurt. "

YES!!!!!

There were a lot of things that my Dear Hubby did that helped me. The biggest one is that he acted compassionate. Now I have no doubt that it hurt him immensely--we did talk about that too--but he didn't just discount me as if "Well you hurt me therefore YOUR hurt doesn't count and you deserve it anyway." He acted as if *my* feelings and *my* thoughts were of interest to him and meant something...and he did that by taking the time to ask me and then actually listen. I know for a fact he would ask, and I would answer honestly, and the honest answer was probably pretty hard to hear at that moment! Shoot the honest answer was VERY, VERY, VERY scary to *say* at that moment! But we were "all in" right? He was very deliberate: if he asked and I answered, he was VERY careful to listen and validate rather than saying "NUH UH that's not how it was..." He did say "well I can see how you'd view it that way and my view differs but I can tell you about that some other day....and that way he actually seemed to care about ME. Honestly, that was MAJOR for me because it was one of the things that demonstrated to me that we were both in it: not just him and not just me. We were in it together!

Another thing he did was just have some fun without "relationship" pressure all the time. I'm sure he wanted to "fix the marriage" and all that--I did too--but the fact is that constantly reading, changing, growing, trying new stuff...it's just exhausting. Plus it kind of puts across a message of "I don't love you the way you are, but if you change who you are entirely I might...some day..." Nope, we (Dear Hubby and I) are actually very much alike and if I weren't his wife I'd be friends with the man! So we did stop doing things "independently" and started to do things together that we both found fun. You'd be surprised how much you like your spouse! So we watched all the Cary Grant movies in order...we read a series together of an author we both like (Stephen Donaldson) etc. And yep we also did quizzes and did relationship things but they were like a portion of our marriage relationship, not the ONLY FOCUS. We realized that part of "reconciling" was becoming intimate and that includes mentally, emotionally, spiritually...and yep physically.

Another thing he did was be patient--FIRM, but patient. What I mean here is that he did not and would not tolerate contact or certain things like that...he did check regularly (and for that I was pretty thankful because it gave me a chance to prove I was behaving)...but he wasn't an overbearing jerk about it. He did not treat me like, "Well I have this weapon I can hold over you forever and when you try and fail, I'm going to bring it up and focus on my hurt." We did focus on him, don't get me wrong, but there was like equal understanding that as a human being I'm going to be imperfect, I'm going to goof up at times, and I felt like I could go to him and say, "Darn I think I messed up but I'm not sure what I should have done differently" and then explain what happened and he'd say, "Well personally I would have preferred if you did this or that" or "In my opinion is seems like this would have been a wiser choice so let's do that now!"