It has been a little while since I have posted but I felt the need to update and give back to the community that has given me such great advice and help along my healing journey.
My H had an affair with a coworker for 6 months back in the summer of 2023, dday was Oct 6, 2023.
I spent so much time in a dark place that looking back I literally feel like I am looking at a mountain of rubble and turmoil, his A came as a complete shock to me and I never thought that he would do that to his family, but he did.
I spiraled into a mess, I couldn't get out of bed, I drank myself stupid to numb the pain, I could barely function besides managing at my job and I barely did that. After D day my H did the normal stuff that WS do, he minimized, trickle truthed, and gaslit me for about two straight months until the extent of the affair finally was brought to the surface, that was around January of 2024 that I got the whole truth, at least that is what I was told.
Since then, my H has been the role model WS and the way that he has shown his kids and I love, I have never seen or experienced from him before. Not only has he grown as a H but he also grew as a father, an employee, and just a person. Even though he has done all of those things, I still have bad days, and honestly, I think I at least have one bad moment each day and I feel like that is to be expected at only a little over a year out. He could sit a certain way and lean back and there are times I STILL have to force myself to not think about her sitting on his lap (love those mind movies). I still cannot venture to the areas where his A took place and neither can he, it is all still too fresh and new that neither of us can stomach the thought of being near where she lives. There is a hotel that we have to drive by quite often that he took her to once and each time we drive by it he won't stop talking because he is trying to quiet his mind and his anxiety too. He tries to ask me to engage in conversation to help him, most of the time I can't.
I will never blame myself for my H affair, but I will take ownership of my actions in the aftermath of the A. I was extremely toxic, to myself, to my H, and also to my children. I don't think that I could have handled it any better because we all know that affairs are trauma by now and his A brought up a lot of old traumas that I never dealt with and was trying to move through in therapy. My daughter (11) now sees a therapist because the amount of toxicity in the home after his A. I was literally a walking zombie, and he held the house together the best he could for almost a year.... he never complained or blamed me, he picked up those pieces and just kept chugging. I became verbally abusive to him and he never flinched, he just cried and would try to talk me down, looking back I am not proud of who I was but I got a little better every day. For almost a year straight I allowed myself to be that way saying that "he deserved it" but really I was hurting myself and my children the most.
I recognized my bad moments, I started getting back into church, I started to spend more time with my kids, and there was a lot of days that the A didn't take the priority in my brain. I finally started to see the good in my H and the work that he had put in just as a person in general and I decided that maybe we really could R this marriage, but I needed to get healthy first, I needed to become the person I wanted to become. I started a bible study group, I had goals at the gym, I slowed my drinking down, and I took on reading again. I wanted us to both become the people we wanted to be before jumping back into each other again. D day came and went and honestly it wasn't too bad, if I remember right, I was just sad, not even mad. Unfortunately that month became a blur.
Fast forward a few weeks later our three year old son had the most tragic accident that required him to have both of his legs amputated. I can't tell you the amount of grief, trauma, and downright agony was in those few weeks at the hospital but it definitely trumped his A for sure but it didn't make the A take the back seat. My H struggled and STILL struggles with thinking that this is karma for what he did and I won't say that I didn't blame him at first either. When the accident happened, my first thought was it was his fault because of what he did, I don't think I ever said it out loud but I didn't need to. Saying it inside my head was bad enough and I realized how horrible that sounded and how I knew deep down it wasn't his fault, I just needed someone to blame, he was an easy target. I do not think that this is his fault and I never will.
Its been 3 months since our sons accident and we are finding our new "normal". I still have bad days, now my H and I take turns crying about the A and the loss with our son , some days it feels like we will never stop grieving. I would like to say that since my sons accident that the A has taken a back seat but it hasn't. I still hate Mondays (I bought my H a shirt that says "I Hate Mondays" with Garfield on it) 
he wears it most Sundays because we know that I will probably be in a pissy mood the following day. I don't bring up the A as much as I used to, I still will ask him questions as they come up, not so much anymore about the details of his A but more so about how he feels about our future and our kids. I still have nightmares often of the A and of him being a monster but not as often as I used to.
I realized I stopped searching for her on social media for over a month (mentally I am much happier), I am tired of her living rent free in my brain, I am tired of not being mentally healthy for my children, and I am tired of not really giving R a full chance by being stuck in the past.
My H still has life 360, a porn blocker, I still ask him to not take his phone to the bathroom, and I ask him to avoid the restaurant he ate with her and her side of town. I know as time goes on I won't need those securities since he is sincerely changing but we both agreed that they have benefited us and we see no reason to change it now. My H has been porn free for about a year, and I know this is debatable, but him and I both see the abuse of pornography as an influence to his A. Since he has been clean, he has changed, he sees women differently, he sees me differently, and he sees himself differently. He has really hit it hard with golfing (which he loves), he joins me at church, he started a new job, and he is completely devoted to the kids and me.
With all that being said we have a very long road ahead, I don't know why I don't post in the R forum, but I am just not ready yet. It's only been a year, and I have a lot of healing to still do, mostly due to numbing my pain through drinking (which I highly recommend not to). I am hopeful for our future and our son's future, I feel like I was meant to find out the A before my sons' accident because if both of those traumas would have hit me at once, I would hate to think of how much darker my life could have been. My H became a better dad to our children before the accident and I think that was meant to be as well, he never left our side, and the way he nurtures, and loves our son now, he never did before. We both have many, many regrets that instead of living in shame alone, we talk about them, we help each other through them now. I find myself wanting to shut him out when I am being triggered, I will walk away and close the door to our bedroom. Once I identify the trigger, what caused it, and how it made me feel I come back out and we talk about it. (Happened tonight). I am trying to give him the chance to be a better person, H, and father but I have to give too, I refuse to stay in the victim mentality anymore, I have things I need to work on as a person too for the sake of myself, my kids, and even him. Self-healing and self-reflection have been the biggest struggle for me, I have a feeling this will take years. Playing the victim is far easier imo than facing the truth and accepting ownership of how you respond to something.
I just wanted to dip my feet back in this site because I have missed it, and I wanted to possibly help anyone else going through similar struggles. I really think it takes about a year for the shock to wear off, to really be able to look around and see the aftermath of what the A has done to you and the people around you. I think about the past year as being thrown around in a tornado, life was flying all around me, but I was in funnel full of shit, and I had no idea the destruction happening around me and I didn't care. When the tornado finally disappeared it threw me out into my normal life that didn't look or feel like my life. Shit was everywhere, everything had be rebuilt, some friends were there, and others weren't. All I wanted to do was cry and make it go back to normal, to take back what he did, to take back the way I handled it, but I couldn't. All we can do is make something out of the rubble, it won't be the same, it probably won't be as pretty on the outside as it used to be but I am hoping it will be more sturdy, more honest, and more humble.
This shit is so hard and literally changes you.
[This message edited by Groot1988 at 3:12 AM, Monday, January 20th]
