I totally and utterly empathise with the 'first' anniversary of any important date following the affair. I've hated all of that. First anniversary of when the affair started, of the discovery, first birthday / anniversary / Christmas / New Year etc. I've struggled with them all.
The anniversary of discovering the affair was the end of last month. It was like a massive roadblock in my head, that I had to get past. In the end it was fairly uneventful. I cried a fair bit and we talked a lot and DH was supportive, still willing to listen and answer questions and reassure me.
It was my birthday recently. It was the first major event in our lives that wasn't a 'first anniversary' since discovering DH's affair.
Last year's birthday was less than a fortnight after finding those emails. My head was all over the place. So was DH's.
It's hard to describe now how I felt at this time last year; it was like I was walking around with a goldfish bowl over my head, and that tiny space was the only bit where the 'discovery' of what had been going on couldn't get to me. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and breathe in and out. I have no idea how on earth I managed to keep working and pretending stuff was ok to the outside world, but I guess that 'bowl' was like a defence mechanism maybe? And the moment I was on my own at home or just with him, the goldfish bowl would shatter and all the anger, pain and sadness would burst out. Then the next day I'd stick the bowl on my head and start all over again.
Last year, DH bought me some beautiful flowers, which I could barely look at. He didn't buy me a card. That hurt. But then when his birthday came a few weeks later (and our wedding anniversary) I understood why, as just reading the sentiments in the cards made me feel angry and resentful, and I ended up not buying a card either.
I think for him, rather than making him feel angry, he felt they'd probably annoy me and upset me. After all, he had told me that he didn't think he loved me a few months previously. He was struggling massively with how he could possibly still love me having done such a thing and had been for a while. And for a few months after the discovery he was in some kind of shock and he shut down a bit and just didn't feel anything. So what was the point of sending me a card with loving messages inside when he wasn't sure he even felt like that?
This year, I had an amazing birthday. DH booked a fantastic weekend away where we learned to do something that I had always wanted to do. (I'm not going to say where we went or what we learnt to do in case it outs me). He was the one who searched for the event, booked it, sorted out babysitters etc.
That wasn't the best bit though. The best bit was my card. I opened it in bed surrounded by DH and the children. I could tell that he had chosen it specifically for what the verse inside said. (In fact he later said that he'd spent at least 20 mins in the supermarket just reading the cards and for the first time really thought about the message he was sending with the verse, rather than just picking a pretty card. And that he felt very emotional choosing one.) The message he wrote himself was special too. I actually spent a lot of my birthday feeling tearful because of that card, but the emotions were happy ones. And I know they're not just words on a page, because he has backed up the messages and meanings with his behaviour for a long time now.
(My dad let slip that my mum looked at the card when she let herself in to drop my present in and that she too cried when she was telling my dad what it said.)
This time last year, I couldn't even begin to contemplate feeling this happy. Maybe some of that is to do with feeling that all my 'firsts' are out of the way. It does feel like some kind of milestone, bizarrely.