# 1 year later: the recovery process.



## NightOwl (Sep 28, 2009)

It's been about 4 months since I posted here. Life has been busy. My SO and I moved back to my home state, 3 states away from where we'd been living, so that I could attend graduate school. He was lucky to find a job quickly and we are happily settling into our new place.

It is nearing a year to the day he confessed a 3 month PA plus a one night stand with someone else to me. A few days after that I found out he made a pass at a woman he had an EA with. Later still I found out about yet another brief PA. 4 women total over a period of just a few months. I didn't think there was any way I'd get through it. I told him it was over, only to realize within a week that the only thing worse than staying with him was leaving. So we signed up for couples counseling.

We both learned the extent of his mental health issues, which he'd been hiding (severe ADHD and depression). He got help for those and it made a huge, immediate difference. Then we had to deal with the mentally ill OW, who basically stalked him on and off for the first few months, leaving us to contemplate the messiness of a restraining order. Thankfully that did diffuse over time.

Through a combination of complete transparency, willingness on both our parts to examine where we went wrong in the relationship, and lots of trust building, we got through 10 months of therapy together and basically rebuilt our relationship.

I am still very scarred, but we are happy together. They are almost separate things - our relationship now, and the past. He is such a different person with the mental health issues resolved. Night and day. Same personality but so much less baggage.

I still have my baggage though. The OW's stalking, and the fact that we'd been friendly before the PA, left quite an impression on me. I felt like I always had to watch my back in the city we moved from, because we never knew when she'd show up. She was like this insidious presence in my life, an infestation I couldn't quite exterminate.

Our therapist agreed that moving away might help decrease my paranoia and intrusive thoughts about the OW. It's been a month. At first I still did a double take at every woman on the street who looked like her, thinking she had followed us here. I ruminated about whether or not she knows we've moved and how she feels about it - part of me felt vindicated. Vindicated that we got through a year stronger than ever, strong enough to move away together, away from her. I wondered if she read the comments I left on mutual friend's facebook posts. I wondered if she saw the pictures of us posted on public galleries, out having a great time together. Part of me wanted to rub it in her face, to make her hurt over how much her plot failed. I would check her online dating profile regularly to see how often she logged in, how often she updated her bio, to confirm that she was still single and probably lonely.

I realized something yesterday. Wishing her more pain does no one any good. Being mentally ill, and refusing to get treatment for it, means she suffers constantly. Out of that suffering comes the type of hurtful actions she took against us - envying me, wanting what I had, trying to get it for herself, lashing out when she failed. If she is still suffering, she is still likely to do the same thing to others - we were not the first couple she tried to break up and probably not the last either. Wishing her pain means wishing pain on those around her who will become her next victims. 

I realized that I should wish healing upon her - that she will get help and become a better person. She is sick, but also bright and creative. She could be a worthwhile person if she were to work towards it. I should wish for her to move on, like we have moved on. I still want her to feel the pain, guilt and regret of what she did - but she should also learn from it and move on from it.

I was able to think about meeting her in the future - years down the line - and that maybe my anger would have faded so much by then that I could forgive her. To accept, not just understand, that she did what she did out of misery, self hatred, and illness. It was a form of self harm, setting herself up to fail to confirm her worst feelings about herself. To be able to say to her, "I hope you've stopped doing that sort of thing to yourself, you deserve better. Anyone deserves better." For it not to be all about what she did to us, our pain, but also about her as a human being. To be able to empathize with her instead of demonize.

I am not saying I'm there but being able to see it on the horizon is a big step.


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## moeman (Aug 12, 2010)

Thanks for sharing.
M.


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