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Hi. 9 months post D-Day. Maybe a little too soon to be feeling so hopeless based on what I've heard from others on here about how long healing can take, but I just can't help it sometimes. Im so tired of hurting. I just want it to be over. Have suffered with depression since long before.

I feel like the length of time between getting triggered gets longer, which is great and I know that's progress, but when I do get triggered, the hurt is just as bad as it was at D-Day. Is this normal? I'm not considering divorce but im so tired. Sometimes I don't know how im supposed to find the strength to forgive again and again after having all of these feelings keep being rehashed like it's just happened all over again. Anyone else experienced this? I don't expect the pain to ever completely go away, but does it get less painful over time? Is there something I can do to make it less painful?

Thanks for listening <3

[This message edited by GothBarbie at 2:21 AM, Saturday, February 11th]

I think the pain level depends a lot on what your ws is doing to repair the damage he's caused you, himself, and the marriage.

What work is he doing on himself to become a safe partner?

Hi GothBarbie,

The saying 'time heals all wounds' is not true. I think time just surpresses it. Also many factors can affect that wound. Reconciliation is not for the faint hearted. It really is a lengthy process. 9 months is a very short time. Im nearly 6 years and I still feel the pain sometimes. Its difficult at times. Healing does take a long time and it all depends on how much or what your ws is doing to help you heal. I always say the person that broke you cannot heal you. Healing is something you must do yourself. Ofcourse your WH should be helping you in the process.

The thing that stuck out from your post is you saying how do you have the strength to forgive again and again. I dont want to speculate but Im guessing he has cheated more than once. If he is a seriel cheater that is a whole different level. Seriel cheaters are 'wired' differently. They have little or no empathy and theyre compulsive liars. I mean all cheaters lie and lir and lie but seriel cheaters take it to a whole new level.

It does get less painful over time once you are 'satisfied' with all the answers they provided to your hundred and one questions. The pain does subside but the truth is what youre feeling may never go away.

Hi. Thanks for the responses. It honestly helped a ton just knowing somebody was out there and willing to listen.

My WH started IC immediately after D-Day and has been doing everything I could ever hope from him as far as working to make me feel safe from this ever happening again. Unfortunately this is not the first partner I've had cheat on me, but the difference in how i feel now vs trying to reconcile with my last partner is like night and day. I really do see a change in him and I do trust him.

He is not a serial cheater, there's not been any incident since the 1 D-Day. My bad for the confusion. I just meant that when I get triggered, i feel so hurt and angry- Too angry to even speak to him or look at him, that I have to find the strength to actively choose to forgive him all over again in my moment of hurt before we can move on. Does that make sense?

It's because of this that I think the problem at this point just lies within myself? I see people talking about the importance of allowing yourself to feel all of your feelings. As stupid as it may seem, I don't know if I'm doing that right? Anytime I allow myself to feel them, it feels like taking steps backwards. How do you find the line between feeling and dwelling? I feel like I'm making things needlessly harder for both of us by allowing myself to get upset over stuff that's in the past when I chose the path of reconciliation. Is this a normal feeling? Am I doing this wrong?

Advice would be greatly appreciated

[This message edited by GothBarbie at 3:48 PM, Saturday, February 11th]

No, it won’t always hurt this bad. It will hurt, but less so with time, self care, IC/MC, and both of your intense efforts toward recovery and reconciliation - even if you don’t end up together, this is work you’ll have to do. Isn’t fair. But, it is the truth of the matter.

EMDR helped me immensely. FWH doing his best to make me feel safe. But, even with that, it isn’t linear and still takes far longer than anyone imagines.

It is only natural for you to be weary of the pain and the process. Think about how things have improved - if they have. Mindfulness also helped me.

As stupid as it may seem, I don't know if I'm doing that right? Anytime I allow myself to feel them, it feels like taking steps backwards. How do you find the line between feeling and dwelling? I feel like I'm making things needlessly harder for both of us by allowing myself to get upset over stuff that's in the past when I chose the path of reconciliation. Is this a normal feeling? Am I doing this wrong?

Not wrong at all. It feels messy because it's a messy process.. lost of back and forth in emotional terms.

I actually found that I needed help dealing with my rage. My IC recommended journaling, of course, where you just puke it all out on the page. Her pro tip was to follow that up with a positive entry, even if it's something small like appreciation for the scent of your morning coffee or bird song and a warm breeze. Apparently that helps the brain to look for the positive, and while I did feel like it helped some, we still had a lot of work to do on my rage.

Ladybugmaam recommended EMDR and I have to chime in and say that helped quite a bit. It doesn't make triggers go away, just sort of chills them out so that the visceral quality of them isn't as overwhelming anymore. Trauma makes the past feel present, and for me, EMDR helped to change that dynamic.

It's great that your WH is in IC. You haven't said if you are getting therapy as well. It's really hard to get through this on our own. The injury is primal and difficult to process without help.

Triggers are unpredictable, and they can push you back into d-day era feelings. What you describe may not be a problem at all. It may just be a normal part of your healing.

2010 was long time ago. I trigger very rarely - if at all - now, but I remember triggering and going into funks for days. I don't remember when that stopped - it might have been 4-5 years out, but it might have been 6-7. I didn't really start reconnecting with joy until after a year out ... at 9 months, I was a wreck, dreading the 1st 'antiversary' of d-day.

I suggest creating an 'observer' inside your head. Monitor yourself. If triggering continues to get less and less frequent, you're on the right path; if that stops, it's time to reconsider what you're doing.

You're not the problem. You're the prize.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:54 PM, Saturday, February 11th]

It gets better.

I am 2.5 years out. I had my first noticeable period of things getting better about a year out from Dday, and then last November (a little over 2 years out) I had another noticeable improvement in overall well-being.

There are still days and periods that are bad. I had a really serious reminder/trigger/anxiety spell a couple of weeks ago and am only just now coming out of the funk of it, but it isn’t as viscerally painful as it was that first year or two.

It can be really discouraging how long it takes, and how fast you can be put back into the pain, but it does get better, slowly, over time.

My Timeline for reference;

d-day 1 10/1/17

d-day 2 10/1 or 2/ 18 (false R for a year - A was underground)

d-day 3 3/19 (no idea what day of March it was - middle sometime I think)

Between d-day 1 and 2 I can say it was a rollercoaster/crazymaking - the biggest nightmare ever - false R will do that to you. I still count from d-day 1 as nothing is the same after that. It's a process. During that time I was hyper-viligant, unable to sleep, eat, no focus on anything, depressed, unhappy, wanted things to be back to the way it was, tired of him, tired of me, tired of the life I had - I wanted to run away on most days. WH of course was just gaslighting me and playing along with whatever he thought I wanted to hear to keep me around while he ate cake and heard about how awesome he was.

Year 2 - between d-day 2 and 7 months post- the final day. Honestly the false-R has kicked the shit out of me. I didn't trust him. did all the monitoring. spent 1000s of dollars to have his phone forensically recovered because I needed to know and could not trust him. I was obsessed. I didn't find him all that attractive anymore, waffled between wanted to ruin his life and feeling horrible about myself. By the end of year 2 I was sleeping better, the hyper-villigance was gone, or all but gone, and I still had days - at least twice a week where my mind was consumed with the A - the other 5 days it was like 1/2 the day. It was still incredibly painful. I did feel better when I started to have a plan to move out - I was starting to save money to give myself the OPTION to leave - which did make me feel better. I found I was more often angry that I was before. I would find myself talking out loud on my commute home, ranting about him and his AP. I still felt bad, but it was a different bad. I still was in a lot of pain - I still was taking it all very personally. I was hurt, crushed. I didn't have the mind movies like I used to, and I didn't ruminate as much.

Year 3 (2-3 years from d-day 1). The A was no longer my primary focus. I am not sure what happened - but I do think the mind can only take so much rumination. I would think about it from time to time but it was less and less. As it turned out COVID ruined my plans to leave so WH and I stayed in the same house, 100% of the time, for most of 2020. At that time I really lost my fear of making him defensive or angry. If I thought about something A related I just said it. His answers no longer made me feel bad about me. I had stopped morning the loss of the relationship and looked more at his brokenness than anything. In other words I had stopped taking it "personally" - I really got this was not all about me at all - it was about him. He would have done this to anyone - I firmly believe that today (and he admits the same).

Year 4 to now (year 5.5) - I am not hurt by the A in that if I think about it, it does not hurt me at all (so there is hope that the pain does completely go away as it has for me :) ). There are things that remind me of the A, but they just - IDK - I guess I really have grasped the A had nothing to do with my self worth - my mind has really figured that out. Two nights ago WH and I were talking on the phone. He told me he went to the store, saw the APs car in the parking lot, and went to another store instead. IDK why he told me except he has made the deal with himself to do so. he then started talking about how much he thought about that time - and how much he realizes he hurt so many people (the OBS was one of his best friends and a co-worker - they are no longer friends) and how much he wishes he could go back and change that, and how much he hates that he was capable of such horrible things. He talked some details about the A (not sexual details just things where they were almost caught by the OBS - the AP, the OBS and my WH all worked together and the A took place like 99% of the time at the workplace) - in the past, that would have brought me back, and I would have felt awful, and I would have ended up in a weeklong+ A-related rabbit hole. No longer. The other night I was marginally interested in the details (whereas before I would have killed to know more) - I was more interested in his process - how he felt about him - his thought process. Totally different place than I was.

In a nutshell at about 2.5 years out I really changed a lot. The pain dissipated quite a bit. At 5.5 years out I am pain free, even when having a totally potentially triggering conversation with him about things I did not know about from back then. Ultimately I win - his A loses! :)

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 2:06 AM, Sunday, February 12th]

Hey there.

I'm 6 years from DDay1, 5 years from DDays 2/3 and 2 years from having a Cease & Desist sent to LTAP for CyberStalking with fake profiles and trying to duplicate our lives.

Your question is a complex one.

It will always hurt. It may always hurt this bad. But, if you do your work on you, it will not hurt with the same intensity. Face it - scar tissue is a bitch. It puckers and pulls and can annoy you out of nowhere and any picking at it can cause discomfort for a while. BUT it doesn't not hurt like the gaping wound that caused the scar to begin with. That scar can be a reminder of the wound, but if you take care of it properly, won't stand out so much after time passes.

Your DDay was only 9 months ago. I barely started to heal at that point. And had no idea as I was healing, my WH and LTAP were underground.

But look at you bad assing your way here on SI. You are here among friends (albeit virtual). You are asking smart questions. You are looking towards the future.

I feel like the length of time between getting triggered gets longer, which is great and I know that's progress, but when I do get triggered, the hurt is just as bad as it was at D-Day. Is this normal?

While there is nothing "normal" about this shit - yes. Yes what you are experiencing is normal. Triggers come out of nowhere. And BAM! knock you on your ass with a power that makes a superhero punch look wimpy. You know what's stronger than those - YOU. You are. You will get knocked down, sometimes harshly. What is more important is getting back up, sometimes slowly, but getting back up.

Around this time, I bought myself a bracelet. A simple thin silver bracelet that on the inside says "keep fucking going" It was less than $10- you can find them on Amazon or many other online retailers. I wear it when I need reminding. I wore it a lot back then. Find something that works like that for you. I know I feel a little extra bad ass when wearing it.

The pain doesn't go away (19 years out) but it does change.

The crippling, crushing, cringing, crumpling pain goes away. The basketball-to-the-gut pain hits once a week or so. Most if the memories become small, short stabbing feelings maybe once a day or two.

So, do you have the courage to take R on? That is the real question. There will be a cost. Is it worth it?