SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I don’t know if it’s because I’m officially entering into my first official "Affair Season" and I’m going to start reliving when my gut started giving me signals - of course the A spans over some significant dates … the majority of the summer, our oldest daughters birthday, our anniversary, my birthday (like, F U buddy).

The week of when the A started, I have my parents actually taking the kids so I can "do me." I’m not really exactly sure what that is, but something just for me. Suggestions?!

My WH thinks he should take time off during this said week to take advantage of it just being the two of us and doing something fun together 🙄 I’m like, you’re the last person I’m going to want to see and I actually feel like disappearing for that entire week so I don’t have to look at your face. Truth.

We’ve decided on a smaller trip to take with our kids for a few days at the end of the month … because it’s summer after all and I can’t very well "punish" the kids by not doing anything all summer. We are kinda doing something similar to last year and will be going on our trip the same time as last year - I tried not to pick the same dates, but unfortunately this was the only time that worked (this in itself is triggering as his A started the week before this trip last year). I will try to make the best of it for my children.

On top of it, his sister asked back in March if her and her fiancé could come visit us sometime in the spring. My WH said no because of everything going on and that it wasn’t the right time. She understood. Well … she asked again if they can come visit us in August - this time my WH says yes. I told him that I’m not very keen on having his family visit and I don’t feel like entertaining and playing "happy family" while they’re around. I told him it’s a triggering time for me and I’m not really in the mood. Although, I think this could be good for him to visit with his sister (due to the fact he hasn’t had any support from his parents) I just don’t want to be apart of it. Does this sound bad or unsupportive? When I’m angry I tell him I’m no longer apart of "his family" and that maybe they need to get used to me not being around anymore. He tells me to quit talking nonsense 🙄

My WH also keeps prying to make more plans this summer. He thinks we should go travel and "live life." I’m sitting here thinking "I wish you would get hit by a bus."

Moral of my post … these next few months are going to be hell. Entering my first A Season, my alarms in my gut started going off in August of 2023 that something wasn’t right, marriage continues to plummet at this point and I’m heavily contemplating bringing up divorce, started losing weight, my alarm bells are screaming now telling me to VAR his ass, thinking I’m going crazy, finding out he’s been having an A … now this shit all adds up.

Lord give me strength. Wanting nothing more than to get through this shit time.

"I wish you would get hit by a bus."

Reading that gave me my laugh today.

Lord give me strength. Wanting nothing more than to get through this shit time.

One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. Easier said than done.

Use this time to do things for YOU. Get a massage, meet friends for coffee, wander aimlessly in stores or in a park, read a book while hanging out in the library, buy some new lipgloss or sparkly undies.

Heartbroken,

You have been heard. Pain radiates from your post.

That first affair season, especially, is indeed a very difficult and triggering time.

Not to pile on, but (from my limited perspective) your husband's pressure to make plans with him, travel, and host people seems to align with rugsweeping and a lack of empathy. While I appreciate both of you trying to normalize life for the kids, he also needs to support you where you are in your pain--not rush or pressure you to do things that will further stretch your emotional bandwidth.

It would be okay for you to take some time away to gain perspective, rest, and decide how you actually feel. It's awesome that your parents are taking the kids. Soak that time up for yourself.

I tapped back into activities that I enjoyed pre-kids: reading, movies, walking/hiking, or just spending a day in solitude.

I actually feel like disappearing for that entire week so I don’t have to look at your face. Truth

It's okay to tell him that this is time for you to heal and that you would like him to support that goal and not pressure you to do what he thinks is best.

My husband supporting me in my pain showed empathy and made me, ultimately, more drawn to spending time with him on my own terms. But I have gotten better about drawing boundaries and making it on my terms. There were (and sometimes are) times when he pressured me to spend time with him in order to help him feel more secure about the relationship...but I'm a lot more honest now in our discussions about that--not mean but honest. We have good and deeper discussions now.

If I'm reading your post correctly, your H has volunteered to host his sister and her finance in August? If you aren't ready to host, you can find yourself needing to travel over those same dates and just let him host while you take some time off at a hotel or go visit someone else who is in your circle of support. (He invited them, so let him make your excuses.) Or you could let him figure out how to cancel this plan with his sister. Either way, I'd bow out of any hosting duties. He should support you in this.

[This message edited by BreakingBad at 8:50 PM, Tuesday, July 2nd]

Chaos

I’m glad I gave you a chuckle today … us BS’s could use a good laugh here and there 😂

That’s been my life for the past 8 months … taking it one day at a time. It sucks, but that’s all I can do for now. I’m trying to plan my time alone and wanting to make the best of it and hopefully take a bit of a "break" from infidelity.

BreakingBad

Thank you for your response. It’s just a shit time all around and I wish I could fast forward these next few months. One thing that has been brought to my attention from all of this is that my H has extreme anxiety and insecurities - I knew he had anxiety, but not to this extreme, plus the extremity of his insecurities is baffling (such a fun and interesting mix 🙄).

I’ve been so disinterested and numb/empty not wanting to put work into R with my H over the past couple of months - I’ve been trying to figure out why (although I have a few ideas). You are somewhat correct with your perspective. While my H says that he knows this will be a "long road" and he’s here every step of the way I don’t think he actually gets it or understands what I need out of it (hell, I don’t think I quite know what I need yet).

Now that his eyes have been opened to what a loser he has been and that he became a very horrible and broken person … he’s seemingly overcompensating for EVERYTHING now - frankly, it’s overwhelming and annoying. For instance, he had zero patience with anything or anyone before and it always wrecked anything we ever did as a family - over the years it actually got to the point that I didn’t even want him coming anywhere with us because it was more enjoyable without him there. He says he sees what a POS he was not only during his A, but just in general. He’s so desperately wanting to pickup and put the pieces of our marriage back together that it’s turning me away - he doesn’t seem to understand why we can’t do all of these fun things and "heal" together at the same time. I don’t really have an answer for him, other than I just don’t feel like living "my best life" with him right now and I’m trying to figure out where he fits into my life these days, if at all.

I think you’ve nailed it when you say that when you felt supported by your H you were more drawn to wanting to spend time with him - this right here is so true. My H I think tries in his own way to support me, but at the end of the day I think he’s more concerned in wanting to support US and our M … he’s so scared I’m going to leave him and it makes him grasp at any straw ( except he doesn’t get that it continues to push me away).

When it comes to his sister, she asked to come for a visit this past spring - H said that it wasn’t a good time. She has recently asked again if she can come for a visit this summer because she really wants to see us - she did offer to get a hotel or to meet in a neighbouring city for all of us to make it a "little vacay." My H wants to see her (I’m all for it, I think it would be a good thing for him), I’m sure my kids would like to see her too. It’s not that I don’t want to see her, I have no ill will against her … I just don’t want too. In some ways I want her to come and I want her to see fit herself what her brother has done to his family and I want her to see that things aren’t all warm and fuzzy over here. My H is adamant that I join in this visit with his sister and her fiancé and thinks it could be "good" for us to have other people to talk too. Again, he’s disregarding that I’ve stated that this summer just isn’t a "good time" for me and I would like to skip out on this particular "family" gathering. Ultimately, he just doesn’t get it and I’m not really sure how to get my point across to him - I feel like I’ve been somewhat nice, I feel like I’ve been a complete bitch … nothing seems to click with him.

We humans live our lives by clocks and calendars. It's in our nature. We do the same shit every year, year after year, occasionally incorporating new events as we grow and age. This applies, unfortunately, to d-days and affair seasons. We automatically incorporate these events into our annual lists.

I think just keeping all of that in my head helped me the most. I got to choose to give those dates their significance. I got to choose how I reacted, approached it all. At least, that's what I tried to convince myself was possible.

What I finally decided was that regardless of the date or day of the week or whatever else, every day of surviving infidelity sucked! Every day was getting a little better, more or less. So why make them worse by even recognizing?

It's not happening right now. D-day, trickle truth, minimizing, lying, blame-shifting... all of it was in the past.

As for the in-laws? From my own personal experience, I'd say spending time with them is a very bad idea, for lots of reasons.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 2:53 AM, Wednesday, July 3rd]

Heartbroken,

Anxiety often leads people to go into a "control" response. As in, "If I do X (or make others do X), the outcome will be controlled and my anxiety will go down."

Sometimes there is consciousness around this pattern; sometimes it's subconsciously driven.

I know that I battle this myself at times.

The problems with the anxiety/control loop are several:
-It sets up a false sense of security. Outcomes often can't be "controlled."

-It interferes with other people's autonomy and enjoyment. The anxious person is so bent on trying to "control" the outcome that they try to "run the show" for everyone--often becoming impatient and angry when others won't cooperate with their vision of what "needs" to happen. Basically, the anxious person is trying to control both the outcome and the actions of others too.
-It fails to address the true underlying issue: anxiety. Because anxiety is the root, this is the real problem the person needs to address. Yet the vast majority of their energy is spent trying to control outcomes, while the anxiety continues. (Basically they try to control the beast instead of vanquishing the beast.)

IMO, you need to give yourself the permission to be in "opt out" mode. Just because your H wants to create his vision of what healing the relationship looks like doesn't mean you have to participate.

As you are well aware, he actually needs to listen to you, really hear you, really empathize. It would be one thing for him to want to take action by offering you possibilties. As in, what if we took a family vacation? Or what if we met my sister and her fiance in a nearby city where we all stay at hotels? However, these should be presented as true options for you--options you can say "no thanks" to and be heard.

A friend of mine experienced the loss of a family member this year. Later on, she supported other people in our circle of friends with their own grief when they also lost family members and what she said really struck me:
"Sometimes you just need to sit with someone in the shit."

Her point was a great reminder that sometimes what isn't needed are platitudes or even action. It's just BEING WITH SOMEONE WHERE THEY ARE RIGHT NOW IN THEIR DIFFICULTY--just sitting in the muck and acknowledging their emotions and validating them.

Often, this is more difficult. We all want to rush to fix. I know I do.

You can try to help your husband understand this...but it seems like you have. So maybe all you can do is have your own back and opt in or opt out of planned activities as you are guided by what serves you. If nothing else, it breaks the dynamic of you participating in your husband's anxiety/control loop fix-it strategies.

Maybe he needs to see that making you a true partner by listening, hearing, and empathizing is at the core of healing--not running around making plans to create the future he would like to see happen.

During my W's A in 2010 I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what. As a result (I think), I relived the A in many ways in 2011. I was a wreck for the whole A period for 3 years, with diminishing intensity. By 2016, though, A season was a non-event - the only reason I remembered I was in A season was that someone on SI mentioned their own A season.

IMO, feeling your feelings now is the best way to defang A season. Opening this thread is probably healing in itself. I know you're in pain now, but life will get better.

I agree that another healing action is to confront your H and talk about what you want to do now, even if you want to withdraw and lick your wounds.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:17 PM, Wednesday, July 3rd]

Unhinged

I completely agree. I’m always looking ahead and wondering what my day, week, month, year is going to look like and start planning ahead. I think the initial "firsts" will be the hardest, and it’s inevitable that this year they will have significance unfortunately. I’m hoping that in the years to follow there will be no significance … but I suppose one step at a time. You’re right about infidelity … everyday about it sucks!

As for my H’s family, I’m not really sure how to manoeuvre the whole situation. I’m fine if he wants to see them (in particular this visit is with his sister) … have at’er, but I’m not feeling it at the moment. No concrete plans have been made, I guess we’ll see how that plays out.

BreakingBad

Thank you for sharing. That definitely can describe some of how my WH reacts and responds when situations in our M or life in general come up and then his anxiety seems to take over and I’m the one feeling the burnout from it.

I don’t know if I’ve opted out of his current healing vision or if I’m checked out of trying at the moment - I’m just so emotionally spent these days I feel like I’ve lost a lot of momentum. I’ve tried to express that I’m numb right now and he can’t just force things along because he wants us to be "ok." He’s constantly looking for validation that I’m going to take him back - I told him I can’t give that to him right now and that he needs to realize the depths of his betrayal are more than skin deep.

I think he’s tried to present it in the way of asking me what I think about this or that, the issue is he doesn’t fully accept or truly hear the answer I give him.

I really like your last paragraph. There is so much work he still has to do on himself and I want to have faith he can become this person at some point.

Sisoon

Thank you. I’m needing to acknowledge the significance of all the "firsts" and how they make me feel - I’m hoping it will help guide me to explore my emotions further. I don’t think all of these "firsts" will carry significance forever, but it definitely does this year (obviously).

I think I will have a conversation with him about what I’m going to need during this time. I need to take some time to reflect on what that look like.