Eight months since my ex-wife said, “start thinking about divorce,” and 7+ months since I discovered that she had been having an 18+ month affair (at that time) I am still having nightmares. It’s started as multiple times a night, but as of late it’s about once a night. I still can’t sleep more than 5 hours a night, and those 5 hours are not consecutive as I still wake up at 1 AM, 3 AM, and 5 AM like clockwork. The pattern has been that at either 1 or 3 AM I’ll think of a lie that my ex-wife told me, or the fact that her family or friends knew about the affair and said nothing to me. For example, one night I remembered that while my ex-wife was out of town (I think Rochester, but it might have been Philadelphia), her best friend in town had family coming to town, but she didn’t feel comfortable driving to the airport on her own. |
My ex-wife’s best friend ended up driving to our house where I drove her and her son to the airport (along with my two kids). Her family’s flight was delayed, so I took them to the observation area where her son could see airplanes arriving and departing up close. My ex told me something along the line of how it was an honor that he trusted his wife to go with me to the airport. I would wake up in the middle of the night remembering this and wondering, “I’m sure she knew my ex-wife was having an affair during this time while I was helping her …
This starts the momentum of thinking of other things, and there are too many to count. To have an affair for so long, there were a lot of lies she told me.
To move past all of this my therapist is working with me on the “vertical arrow technique.” I’m not sure it’s been helpful yet, but I am desperate for a solution because i have triggers and think of something multiple times each day.
Outside of my therapist, connecting with others to hear what they have done is helpful (sometimes…)
Any time a betrayal as intimate and personal as an affair is enacted on someone there is trauma. Nightmares, Mood swings, Weight loss or gain, hair falls out sometimes, but the man in the mirror is seldomly recognizable. The person you let closest to you, told your dreams to, the person you forsook all others to build a life with turned that life you were planning into a joke at your expense. They lied to your face, lulled you into a false sense of security, and then took the man you were and destroyed the memories, love, affections, and personality out of some imagined slight or perceived opportunity at a better life than the one they helped you plan for you and them. Of course, it’s traumatic.
I drove myself mad trying to find some tiny moral loophole that could write off all the pain, and uncertainty, and anxiety she’d caused me as a simple indiscretion or slip in her judgement. But it wasn’t, it started out that way, but when she went back the second time it was a conscious choice to hurt me. Things get out of hand when you mix men and women in dire need of blowing off some steam with alcohol, I could have forgiven that. But going back again and again completely sober…Is it that easy to drive any thought or consideration for me from your mind? That easy to shatter the world of the child you brought into this world. Was it worth risking everything we’d gained over the last 9 years just for a taste of what could have been with him if only you’d said something or made a move when you first met him all those years before we met?
All the trinkets on the shelves that represent memories of each misadventure, milestone, all the love we felt in those moments…tainted. He was off limits when he was your childhood best friend’s husband, but not now that all those friends except your current best friend, your current husband, the man at home giving our kid a childhood it’s perfectly acceptable? What did she do for you that merited such devotion and loyalty that I didn’t? I married you, got us a house, gave you a perfectly healthy, adorable, loving child; but we don’t warrant that kind of consideration. She had the time of her life and managed to keep me in the dark for months, until he called it off. She let me console her for what I thought was the loss of her oldest friendship, she leaned on me, needed me, cried on me, then one day it clicked. He wasn’t just the last friend she still had from her life before me, he was the one who got away, and now he’d gotten away again.
I moved into a motel. I didn’t need to be surrounded by everything we’d accomplished together knowing it wasn’t good enough for her. When the kids started wondering when Daddy was going to come live at her house again, I couldn’t bring myself to go through with divorce and I caved, moving back in. I slept on the couch while she was at school and stayed up cleaning at night to avoid being in the same room as her mother any more than necessary. Then one night she asked me to talk after the kid was in bed and we went into the bedroom to talk about it, us, everything really. “We can’t do this anymore.” she started, “You hate me, you resent me, you regret us, fine I get it, you should have unlimited animosity towards me, I deserve it. I hate myself for not having enough faith in us that my lust for another man cloud my better judgement and talk me into risking everything that mattered. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. The fact you’re willing to move back in with me after I lied, cheated, betrayed, and threw you away for our daughters sake makes it clear that you deserve better than just me. But know that I know what I’ve done, I know you’re barely holding it together, and know that there is nothing I won’t do to fix this. But you see the changes in attitude, the melancholy, the hopeful sadness in the way she sticks to you like your shadow, and I can’t do this to her anymore. I’m taking tomorrow off, so as soon as she leaves for school, you yell, scream, throw things, hell smack me if you really need to; but we’re going to find a way for me to fix this so we can sleep together…at night, talk at the dinner table again, be in the same room together more than to put on a show, do things together just the 2 of us again and provide the example we’re supposed to for her. Because I’m not going to live like this until she leaves for college it’s not doing her any good, she’d be better off if you went back to the motel if this is the best we can do. I have no idea how to prove myself to you, how to fix what I broke, how to heal the hurt I’ve caused, or if it can be fixed. Even if it can’t be fixed, we can do better than this so you just tell me whatever you need from me to fix this as best as we can for her sake.”
We spent 3 years reconciling. Not just for the kid’s sake, but because we belong together. But I still have nightmares, I still wonder why, and there are still times I wonder if she loves me more than she would another man or is she with me because it’s easier for her than doing it all alone.