5 years on from the affair and not recovered

[Puzzlez]

Hi. I was hoping for some feedback from people on my situation.

My long term partner had an affair 5 years ago. It was all horribly messy. The circumstances were particularly difficult at a time where things in my life were already overwhelming and I sustained considerable trauma.

We weren't married, and we both had grown up children but I think it hit me particularly hard because it was so shocking. So unlike him. And sadly after the discovery he did the worst possible thing which was to persuade me to reconcile only to betray me several times again. Realistically it was probably 18 months of on and off torture from the first day I discovered the affair.

I've survived, but certainly part of me died in a way and I've felt like the essence of me hasn't returned and never will return.

After a full blown breakdown, I got back up. I got back to work. I regained my ability to get on with daily life, but I'm fundamentally changed.

I don't really feel joy, hope, excitement or even peace. Just sort of either mild anxiety or a kind of contentment. I feel very disconnected from myself and quite lost.

I stopped being social, cut off all my friends and more or less just see immediate family. My coping mechanism is work. I work all the time and if I keep my brain busy then I can't think about it or remember it.

I stayed with my partner. Although we split for a while. He did everything he could. He's exceptionally devoted and loving and is completely mortified about the past. He wants to know what he can do to help but I don't know the answer.

I have grown children and I'm 49 and part of me longs to just pack a bag and walk out and spend the rest of my life just wandering. Because I don't feel like the same person anymore and I feel like I don't belong in my life.

I've tried a few times to discuss this with my partner but he becomes really panicked and says I'm everything really so he doesn't know how to think of life without me. He just keeps trying to fix it. Most of the time I just work so I can pretend.

That's not to say I'm crying all day. We just get on with things and most days laugh and cuddle and cook dinner and go on holidays and he's always trying to make me happy for which I feel touched but also sad.

This is rambling.

Can anyone identify at all with this?

Just to pick up on this, there are therapies where you don't have to go over what happened in anything other than the most basic details.

You were out with him snogging like teenagers? You are giving him permission to treat you like this.

Me too !
It doesn’t help anything, I’m way more anxious , I could cry over the stupidest thing, & I way overthink everything …. It’s a balls of a thing tbh 😕

You write so eloquently and the pain you have experienced is so visceral I can feel it through the screen. I’m so sorry for what you have been put through, and I’m glad that writing here is helping. That in itself is a massive step.

I am a psychologist and I agree with the many excellent posts about trauma, and your experience fitting with infidelity PTSD. The crux of any trauma is the impact the event(s) have had on your sense of self. It sounds as though you were at a more vulnerable place at the time of his cheating, which would have impacted this too. You are clearly reflective and insightful.

There is a disconnect and incongruence throughout your posts, which likely reflect the complexity of your feelings. Sometimes we can spend so much time trying to logically understand, seeking information and knowledge that we can risk intellectualising things (e.g preoccupation with attachment styles) which avoids us from facing the crux of the issue, and feeling the associated pain. This is entirely normal and understandable, but can lead to feeling stuck and dissociated. I personally take attachment theory with a pinch of salt as I believe we form different attachments with different people in our lives depending on our relationships with them, it’s a fluid dynamic process. I would argue that the main issue here is one of morals/values rather than attachment styles. The way your partner mistreated you repeatedly by lying, cheating and multiple betrayal is reflective of his character, not his attachment style. It must be incredibly painful to reconcile the person you love, with his actions from that time. I wonder if you have any shame around your decision to stay with him, and that feeds into your avoidance of friends and family? Your anger towards them is valid but seems disproportionate considering your partner is the cause of your pain. Sometimes anger can be deflected onto others if it doesn’t feel safe to express this to the real cause of the pain. It can be very difficult when the only real comfort you can get is from the cause of your pain - that is torturous. It really sounds as though you would greatly benefit from reconnecting with some of the friends you have distanced from, or perhaps meeting new people.

I can relate to the soothing effect of travelling and the unfamiliar. However I think you would likely find that you can change the scenery, but the situation (and your internal world) remains the same. Avoidance leads to a lack of processing of memories and feelings, meaning that triggers can lead you to feeling straight back to that time. Without a coherent narrative of what has happened to us, it is so hard to live a joyful, authentic life. The incongruence in your posts reflect this; snogging in the milk aisle with a person who provides you the most comfort and connectedness, but who has also caused you the most significant amount of hurt and pain. Without fulling processing the past, it’s likely you are only enjoying things on a surface level until the next trauma wave hits. To survive, you have closed yourself off. To heal, you need to face and feel the pain, as unbearable as it is. The more you suppress, push down your feelings and avoid difficult thoughts, the more intrusions you will have. I would also recommend seeing a good trauma therapist, who you can feel comfortable with and trust over time - it’s a process and not a quick fix, but you deserve this time.

Please be kind to yourself and give yourself the best chance of healing. Do not drop anchor here and be aware of your own self talk e.g him being ‘the one’. He is actually very unimportant in this, and I think therapy will help you to realise that. Take care of yourself.

Ha ha, I bloody enjoyed it thank you :)

I honestly didn't know this was a thing, thank you. I will have a read up on it all.

Thanks so much for this post, it was such good food for thought.

My sense of self was focussed around a few things, all of which were shattered at the same time..

1. Being resilient - completely losing it the way I did made me feel a LOT of shame.

2. Being successful - being unable to work for a year meant I lost my career and had to start a new one, this is being soothed as I am doing brilliantly in a new one now but there was considerable professional shame as my breakdown was pretty much the gossip of the town.

3. Taking no shit from crappy men - staying with him was a massive jolt to the system because like most people I never thought I would stay with someone who cheated on me.

4. Being a good Mum - and frankly during the worst of it, for a while I was a shit Mum.

5. Being generally respected socially for being "together" - I was never the drama sort of person and I lost a great deal of dignity when I was wandering around in my pyjamas crying and shaking.

And here is the crux of all of it, the bit that probably hurts the most, a bit scared of writing this on Mumsnet as I will be clobbered, but my belief my whole life - through some VERY crappy hands dealt to me, was always that when I found the right person he would love me, know right away that he loved me, and we would build something lovely.

The story I got, wasn't the one I planned in my head and it makes me feel small, and I lost so much confidence from it as well as faith in "love", as pathetic as that sounds. Someone said earlier they would sooner cut off an arm than do this to their spouse and I fully expected him to feel that way. I think he feels that way NOW, but didn't then, and reconciling this with my somewhat pollyanna view of life has been soul changing.

I feel both shame and pride for staying. Staying was MUCH harder than leaving and i feel like I was brave and made a decision from my heart to do something immensely difficult for me. but I feel a lot of shame too. I think back to specific moments where I absolutely should have told him to fuck right off and didn't. Not to say I regret not doing that, but it created a dissonance.

Also, I feel shame that I didn't look after me better. I am sorry that I wasn't able to protect myself better than I did, and there was a LOT I could have done to handle it better rather than the begging, whimpering, bargaining and pathetic mess that I actually was. I swore from minute one that I would not participate in the "pick-me" dance, and made that crystal clear, but then when it became obvious he wanted that dance, I didn't decisively tell him to fuck off, so it ended up being back and forth for MONTHS. that caused me so much more trauma.

"Without a coherent narrative of what has happened to us, it is so hard to live a joyful, authentic life"

This is a very moving sentence for me, as it explains so much of what I need and don't have. You explain it exactly, it is like I live two lives. One where I outwardly have everything I want and life is great, but I have not processed the past and I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

"Without fulling processing the past, it’s likely you are only enjoying things on a surface level until the next trauma wave hits. To survive, you have closed yourself off".

Exactly.

From reading your wonderful post I am wondering if maybe these periods where I spiral and go through the grief are just me experiencing the things I have tried to avoid.

Thank you.

I just want to clarify from my last post, I did tell him to fuck right off when it was happening, lots of times, but then I never stuck to it. The sorry truth was that my entire life was falling apart and he (the one hurting me) was also my source of love and comfort and I didn't feel I had anywhere else to go. I will also admit something I am utterly bloody humiliated over, which is that I felt pretty sure if I truly walked away that he would run to OW for comfort and I couldn't cope with that at all. Pathetic, I realise, but it is the sad truth. With the benefit of hindsight I see now that in his state of mind at the time, he probably WOULD have run to OW for comfort and I struggle even now with how it feels knowing that. I have to find some way of acknowledging that he was capable of being such a truly shit person because I 100% believe he is not anymore, and that he did the work and faced the demons that created that part of him but knowing he was ever capable of it is hard on me.

He’s a serial philanderer, he’ll never change. Don’t waste your money on couples therapy. Do your own, on your own, after you’ve left him. Do not waste anymore of your life on him, he doesn’t deserve you.

Ah OP, I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I’ve dealt with similar - an on and off relationship where he then behaved disgustingly. And at the time I truly thought he was the One, and couldn’t understand how I could cope without him.

It took me nearly two years (long, hard years) after we broke up to see him for what he actually was - an immature, weak man who didn’t really know what he wanted and subconsciously was always keeping an eye out for something else. He betrayed me because someone else came onto him and he had felt insecure about the on/off nature of our relationship before - sleeping with her was the easiest way to feel superior to me/validate himself. He was also desperate to be the nice guy, and didn’t want to let her down so he kept seeing her!!! Whilst also declaring that he didn’t really like her!!! I had lots of gushing words/ tears from him about how I was the only woman for him etc, but it was only a lot of time away from him that made me see how worthless it all was. I would never have seen him for who he really was if I’d kept him in my life.

I’m sorry to be blunt, but this man is not strong enough to love you. He’s like a weak swimmer making you drown to keep his head above water.

My advice would be run and never look back. You are everything, you don’t need him.

Be it on your own shoulders then 🤷‍♀️

You are depressed. Please see your GP ASAP.

Op, this all sounds horrible. But I disagree that it is easier and braver to stay than it is to leave. There are no medals and no prizes for forgiving and forgetting. Ultimately everyone moves on and no one outside you two will care about whether you stayed or not.

My other observation of those who stay is that by hanging on to the pain and trauma and issuing occasional reminders of it is really the only way you can retain some sense of control over the other person...because you've already come to understand that they are capable of doing the unimaginable. In a way, moving on and never mentioning it again means that you relinquish any control you have...and so once again you're at the mercy of them taking a fancy to someone else.

Apologies if you've answered this @Puzzlez however I don't understand why you don't end the relationship. You are in such agony that it's absolutely visceral to us on here.

The other thing is, your partner is in this turmoil also trying to make amends for his decisions 5 years ago. Whereas this is of his doing, he is also now suffering. And he's probably still waiting for the 'chop', ie that you might leave him anyway. You both sound trauma bonded to each other. I really believe the most compassionate thing to do for both of you would be to end the relationship. Only then will the true healing begin. For you both.

What is this is about, anyone know?

He's a dick. He abused and betrayed you. You can write thousands of words justifying why you stayed and how he's changed. But it doesn't matter how many words you write or how many times you go round it in your head, he's still a dick who destroyed a piece of your soul.

@Puzzlez I can't understand why an intelligent resourceful woman like yourself would allow an arsehole man like your partner to affect your mental health to the degree that you find yourself in now. He's just one man, there's plenty more of them out there. He's really not a catch at all. He's not someone to be proud to be seen with. Get out there and live your life which you only get a chance to do once. TBH I'm staggered by your attachment to him.

ETA He's not with you because he loves you. It's because it suits him ATM. I'm saying this from personal experience and not to hurt you.

If you leave there is a good chance you will meet a man who is truly worth loving.

Why don't you read the whole thread?

Look up hysterical bonding.

I struggled the same. The person who I thought always made everything okay was the one who has caused me the most pain.

Yes, it’s really a thing.
The sad thing is 5 years is a long time to still be carrying this …… and be together.
I know a few folk whose been through this , but they DID get through this.
And are happy.
Its not an instant fix and does take time.

But you don’t need a man!

@Puzzlez how are you Puzzlez? I've thought a lot about you since reading your thread. I hope whatever you decided to do, you've had some peace