I have a lot of thoughts and feelings swirling around in my head. It’s easier to not be alone with them, so I figured I’d write them out here. Maybe you guys could help me make sense of them.
It’s been almost two months since D-Day, which is strange. During my affair, it felt like time was going by so much faster than it actually was; it felt like it lasted months, when it was really only 4-6 weeks. Now it feels like time has slowed down: it seems like it’s only been two weeks, at most, since BH found out about everything. Maybe that’s a good thing, if it’s going to take years and years to recover from this.
The love I feel for my BH since then feels different: deeper, but also more desperate. I know if he needs to leave me for any amount of time (including… I don’t even want to say it, but forever) in order to heal, then I need to let him go. It’s still so terrifying to me to think about. When we are lying together in bed or on the couch, I feel like I can’t get physically close enough to him, and that I can’t squeeze him tight enough. I find myself waking up from nightmares and checking to see if he’s there a couple times each night. (He’s often awake too.) I’m savoring each kiss goodbye when he leaves for… well, anywhere I’m not going with him, like it might be the last. I’ve always had anxiety that my family members will get into car crashes or freak accidents or go missing when they go out, but now it feels 10x worse because I imagine him deciding to exit my life voluntarily too. And I know it’s all my fault, too.
I literally can’t even imagine what my life would look like without him in it.
He has brought that up as a problem a few times. I think (and I could be misinterpreting this; I need to talk with him about it) that he wants me to be able to do that, to know what all the other alternate universes look like where I didn’t meet him at 19 and get married to him at 23 and have our child at 24 and be where we are at 28, and still choose this reality with him. It doesn’t feel fair, because how am I supposed to know? My life has always been filled with twists and turns, usually taking me places I love ending up in. I feel so freaking grateful for it all the time. It feels like God wrote this wonderful plot for my life and that it’s going exactly how it’s meant to, all according to plan. I am genuinely happy to be where I am, with him and our family and our home, even if our marriage is in a rough place right now. But he worries that he’s arrested my personal development, I think, because of our age gap, and that I’ve never had a chance to "find myself." Meanwhile, I feel like I continue to find a little bit more of myself each and every day, especially while we try to recover from my infidelity.
I’m trying IC again. I have my first session scheduled for Friday. I’m nervous about it. Every time I meet up with a new therapist, I hope so much that they’ll be the "right" one for me. There’s been a lot of disappointment and "break ups" with therapists, and I fear that happening again (and again and again…) I’m still trying to go in with an open mind, but it is difficult. I want to heal from my own shit, too.
I thought I was completely over exAP, with whom I’ve gone NC. But I listened to country music for the first time since D-Day (I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped) because I had "Carrying Your Love with Me" by George Strait stuck in my head, and I immediately started missing AP. (He’s from the south.) I felt so sad and also so disgusted and confused by the sadness. How can I love BH so damned much, and still be pining after this other person? I have thought, "Maybe I am polyamorous. Maybe, if I weren’t committed to a (mostly?) monogamous marriage with BH, that these feelings for exAP would just be additional feelings; maybe love is not a finite resource, and having it for more than one person doesn’t diminish the love I still have to give it in any amount."
But then I remembered being hypersensitive to all of the weaknesses in my marriage and falling prey to comparison between the idealized version of exAP I had in my head and the excitement of a shiny, new relationship, to BH (who is a much better man and partner to me than exAP ever would have been) and our decade-old relationship. It’s not a good thing. I am trying to focus on all the negatives about exAP and the poor ways he treated me. All the lies I suspected him of telling. The awful rollercoaster of emotions he put me through, and the immorality of his pursuit of a married woman. The disrespect of trying to contact me again despite telling him we were through, that I’d hurt BH more than I could have ever imagined, and that I am choosing my marriage…
Last night BH called me into his office and showed me a couple who had messaged us on a swinger website. I felt confused, and a little worried. I know we are both interested in looking for friends for the both of us, and that I feel fine with him being sexually involved with other women (maybe excited even ?), but generally the expectation with swinging is that I would be involved with the male half of this other couple. I don’t really feel one way or the other about it— I certainly don’t actively desire that or feel the need to sleep with other men at this point in my life— but I worry it could be triggering for BH… I guess we need to have a conversation about it. Or, maybe I am getting ahead of myself; maybe they would just be friends. Who knows.
Well, I’ve gone and written a whole book. Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far!
