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So my father passed away in November. He took Maid. My little brother passed 2 years before and my mom passed during the time I found out about my wife's affair 12 years ago. I'm the last man standing in my first family. I got my dad's estate finished and we went home after the funeral. Then the triggers hit, then the movies started. i knew something was going on and of coarse my adult kids see the change. They know nothing of the affair. So they start saying I need therapy for grieve because that what they know. I know I'm in trouble because I'm regressing fast. So I start EDMR for the movies. Of coarse I'm communicating this all with my wife. And then I start ruminating again. I get that my mom's death and the affair got intertwined. My dad's death triggered the affair movies. I ruminated about the hotel rooms.My wife is going on two years sober. Not a drink. She's a different person now. But she's having a hard time with my regression as am I. It's causing both of us real issues. It's like some weird trauma induced grieving process that is difficult to contain. Like so bad I literally feel sucked back into our bedroom during D day when I confronted her and she told me she screwed her AP. Then my ruminating restarted about the hotel rooms and then we started arguing. Which we haven't done in years. I'm doing EDMR but we start processing tomorrow. I feel 20 years older and I'm exhausted like I was post DDay. I thought this shit was done. I get triggered by the most bizarre things. And it's like I'm right back there. Anybody else get it this bad this far out?

I am so sorry you are in a state of reliving your wife’s affair. But you are not alone with latent memories and ruminations 12 years out. In my case it was a passing thought that drug me back to D-day. Disclosure day for me was 33 years ago. I was shocked that I was reliving, redealing with, and relooking at my wife with the eyes I had on D-day.

What was suggested to me was to stay in the moment and see my wife as she is today not yesterday. As you said, your wife is 2 years sober and not the same woman she was when she was drinking. Lean into that reality for that is what you are living now.

It wasn’t easy at 1st but once I got my brain to stay present, the pain was reduced tremendously.

I have no doubt you will receive other great advice that may or may not fit your situation or interest. Just be fluid with what your options may be for it is real easy to get stuck thinking there is only one right way through this.

Whatever you do, know you are not alone in this.

Asterisk

Anybody else get it this bad this far out?

A lot of people have. I went 20 years barely thinking about it, and then boom. It was on me.

Some random thoughts…

Although you are thinking about affair, clearly the thinking about the affair isn’t really about the affair. Your life events triggered it. When you get triggered (really when you trigger yourself) as quickly as possible shift your attention to the question, why now? What is making me dredge up this memory?

We refer to them as "mind movies" but really they are "mind plays". You dig them out of your memory, and you run a play of whatever happened all new. You basically harvest the emotional effect, and then tuck it back away modified.

That modified is important. There are memory reconsolidation techniques out there that take advantage of the fact that when you pull up a memory, it’s not written in stone. It is in a fluid state that you modify before you tuck it back away. One of them is EMDR, which you will be doing with your therapist, and you pretty much have to be with your therapist to do it, as it involves their interaction.

There are other others that you can do by yourself. One in particular is easy to try, called FreeSpotting. Google on it. A gentleman named Clint Matheny has a nice page describing it, along with pretty much all the other memory reconsolidation techniques that are out there. Maybe give it a read, and then discuss with your therapist whether you could try it there and then try it at home.

Others will show up with other ideas and experiences, one thing that I feel comfortable in stating is that you can resolve this. What you don’t want to do if you can avoid it is just slouch back into the way things were before. Use this crisis to push you to a new state, better than before.

Sending strength!

Well:
Anybody else get it this bad this far out?

And:

HouseOfPlane:
A lot of people have. I went 20 years barely thinking about it, and then boom. It was on me.

Ditto for me - for ??? reason (my thought was we were living like room mates than married" - got me in 2015.

20 years later - give or take a year

My trust in her was never restored - other than I can trust her to pay bills and grocery shop. Now? We're both retired (no formal employment) and, I guess, majority of folks have used up their wanderlust.

Sad the memory is "yours" forever. Her? Doubt she thinks of it - at all.

Somewhere I read that a quote was made: "I never met a man who regretted divorce a couple years after decree final." - or something like that.

As HouseOfPlane noted: What was suggested to me was to stay in the moment and see my wife as she is today not yesterday.

I would consider seeing a shrink - other than the dent in your wallet - can't hurt. Just might help.

JM, here is another technique that is very powerful.

When you start down the rumination spiral, train yourself to move your attention to your body. As the mental imagery hits and your adrenaline spikes and your stomach churns, you will feel that emotion directly in your core. That feeling of tension and energy is the emotion.

Really lean in on that. Don’t just vaguely feel it, really trace where it is acting. Is it increasing or decreasing? Where exactly is it located? Is it moving around your body? What is it doing over time?

When you start ruminating, it takes you out of the present and into the past. When you then put your awareness on the emotion driven feeling in your body, it snaps you back to the present. Stay with it as long as you can.

Those feelings that you were feeling, they aren’t just side effects of the rumination. They are the output of the rumination. They are the emotion made real.

This is one of those little anecdotes that sticks with you, that I read sometime ago

The first living person I ever met who radiated real peace was my former next‑door neighbor – a 28‑year‑old paraplegic living in a nursing home.

What struck me wasn’t optimism or philosophy. It was the absence of inner agitation.

Because he was paralyzed from the neck down, he wasn’t feeling the constant kinesthetic emotional signals most people live inside of – tension, urgency, bracing. Without that bodily emotional noise, something unexpected remained.

Peace.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 12:41 AM, Wednesday, April 1st]