Quote: I am REALLY having a hard time with guilt & anxiety.
I believe this is only natural. My W too went through this for a brief period of time. She woke up in the middle of the night a couple of times with an anxiety attack. It didn't last too long and she learned to work through them.
You know SBH-SAM, you may feel badly about how you handled the most recent situation with this old client, but I believe the universe provided this opportunity for you to learn more about yourself... Have you not realized some important things and grown as a result? I imagine you can say today that you are more equipped to handle these types of situations with other men than before??? This is an important thing to recognize and accept, that you were open enough to listen to the universe. Try and take heart, SBH-SAM, and feel grateful for this gift.
Thanks, Jethro. Yes, once I had a chance to adjust to the humility of feeling myself and my behavior so exposed to the world , I did realize that this was a GREAT learning experience, and, even though I stumbled, I DID make MY OWN decision about not having coffe with the guy, and I've now admitted one of the serious flaws I have that allowed me to have the affair in the first place. After the initial agony of having your flaws exposed, there is that strength of knowing "this is just a problem that I CAN fix!"
I kind of posted to you too on Sad's thread. Sorry to hear about the night time panick attacks. I hope they are mild and fade once things settle down for you.
Hi, SB & Char...the "panic attacks" are definitely mild, and seem to have gotten better in past few days - I've been sick and taking NyQuil at bedtime, don't know if that makes a difference! But I think I am also feeling better about myself, particularly after learning so many things.
You know, I just want to say - I was VERY attracted to a guy in graduate school - we were both married. After I got separated I approached him about it, and he said he didn't want to leave his wife but we could have an A. I said, "No thanks." It was easy - I didn't want to cheat on anyone, even if it was someone ELSE'S spouse.
That memory just made me more confident that my lapse in judgement had a lot to do with my status as a burned out therapist and a stressed out mom than with my true moral chacter. Just thought I'd brag a little...
That IS a comfort, No? I think you're right. And I imagine there were similar forces for CJ too. I can't wrap my head and heart around the possibility that he is somehow deeply, chronically "amoral" or any such thing. It just doesn't "jive" with the person I've known all these years.
It was also part of why these events and the disclosures were so mind-blowing for me, and Sad too, I imagine.
Glad you're feeling better. The Nyquil may well have played a role there by perhaps supressing REM sleep or otherwise messing up your sleep stages.
I know this is a ROUGH time for you and SAD both. We're here for you. I HAD to bounce you back up from page two!
Wanted to mention something about what SAD said on his thread (as I know you read each others)...I agree that we are all going through rough patches right now because it IS part of the healing process.
You have NO idea (well, I gues you DO ) how comforting it is to know that MANY of us are working through the same issues, that it's not a sign of "failure" or anything "wrong" with where we're at.
Whew! I was all the way at the bottom of the third page of threads! Time for me to post!
Hope everyone has been well over the past couple of weeks!
Reason why I haven't posted lately:
Friend of a friend (well, the "boss" of my consultant who is helping me through the land mine of closing my practice and being sued) was selling a house in the neighborhood I really want to live in - 2 blocks from the elementary school, 3 blocks from the neighborhood pool, 5 minutes drive from the day care, 10 minutes drive from church. All of these things are at least 20 minutes drive away from our current house. My consultant told me her "boss" who is really her best friend, I think, was selling this house - she and her husband bought it for a hispanic family who moved here a few years ago and weren't citizens so couldn't get a mortgage. Now they are citizens and have bought the house across the street from this one.
The "boss" told my consultant that SBH and I could have first dibs, before they put it on the market. So I assume there is no realtor involved, that the boss will show us around the house, give us a couple of days to think about it, then we get the mortgage etc. and no big hassles.
WELL. There WAS a realtor involved - big wig big city Richmond realtor who put the for sale sign up BEFORE WE'D EVEN STEPPED OFF THE PROPERTY! Then tried to convince us not to buy it, I don't know WHY?! I get pretty stressed, but we went ahead and put a contract on it less than 48 hours after we saw it.
Just got the inspection report back last night. I was getting really excited about moving - looking forward to being in the area in which I spend most of my time, near friends, much better neighborhood for the kids, etc. etc. The house is on a slab, and is 27 years old. Realtor told us the roof is 12 years old and so has used up about half its life. B.S. It is a 10 year roof. There are soft spots in the siding where water may be leaking into the walls. The plumbing is 27 years old and imbedded in concrete slab. The heat pump is new, but the air handler is 27 years old. BOO! And we already had some reservations because the house is about 400 square feet smaller than ours now.
So we're going to have to tell the ahole realtor that we're not going to buy it. I hope it doesn't ruffle too many feathers. But, ya know, I've lived my life trying not to ruffle other people's feathers, and it has gotten me nowhere but sad.
I am really disappointed, though. And the more I think about it, the more I realize how much disappointment, isolation and loneliness this house has for me. We bought it to get out of living with SBH's parents, where we'd been for 8 months. It was 1 mile away from the property his dad had just bought to build an ATV dealership, which SBH was supposed to run and inherit. It was about 10-15 minutes drive from the office where I was practicing at the time. And it was about 15 minutes away from SBH's sister, who has a daughter 8 weeks older than our daughter. We were swapping baby-sitting at the time and I thought I would be close with her and the girls would see each other a lot. SBH's sister also lives in the same subdivision as my closest and oldest friend in this area, who I also thought I would see more of and spend more time with.
SBH's dad is now in bankruptcy because he couldn't get the county to approve his building, his wife left him (SBH's step-mom), and he is selling the ATV dealership, if he doesn't lose it to the bankruptcy. He fired SBH who was working for him in his machine shop until the ATV dealership came through, 6 months after we'd bought this house and 3 months after I'd gotten pregnant with our second child. SBH's sister is not a healthy person, and only causes pain & distress in our life. A year after we moved into the house, she decided to work full time at home, watch her own kids, and not take care of my D. I went through the stress of finding a day care person, then she moved her D to the same day care. Which was great, but I still felt resentful. Novw we hardly ever see her or her kids. I have moved twice from the office I was in, to offices further and further away from our house. Now I don't even have an office! And my best friend is so involved with her kids and her neighborhood, she never has time for me. Our neighborhood had few houses when we moved in, but now is full of retired people and young couples with either no kids or tiny babies. Yuck.
I have a couple of close friends in the area I want to move to. I am really disappointed. SBH doesn't really want to move. THat makes me feel sad and lonely. He said we will continue to fix up the house (good thing, since we have $600 worth of fix it up stuff from Lowe's in the garage now!), and I can keep looking in that neighborhood for a better house. I guess I just feel discouraged and disappointed...
There is more, but I'm going to end this post because it is probably really long and start another one, just to keep it organized!
Peace to all - just writing this and knowing I will get supportive responses helps me feel better about everything - thanks guys!!!
Ok, so here's the other stuff. I was thinking the other day, as I was ironing my clothes to go meet with the lawyer for the first time to discuss the malpractice case against me. I thougt about my dad telling me that my mom has lost 10 pounds - he told me this to say that she's gotten more sessions for a therapy group she's been going to for years, which is a good thing because she's made so much progress the therapist is having trouble justifying to the insurance company that she should have more sessions. Anyway, she has been worried about me, and this may be why she has lost weight. Dad made sure to tell me he wasn't trying to make me feel guilty, etc. etc. Which was fine.
But I was thinking "f-u for worrying about me NOW. I stewed and worried and felt guilty about the decision to have the As BY MYSELF. I didn't feel I could come to you for guidance (mostly because she would be so anxious about it she wouldn't be able to help me - story of my life), so I suffered and made poor decisions and now I'm paying the consequences. F-u for thinking you're such a big part of this NOW. Leave me alone. I was alone when I got into it, I'll get through it alone now. I don't need you to make me feel guilty for 'putting you through' this!"
NEVER would say any such thing to her!!! But then I realized that is the same feeling I was having when SBH first found out about the As. Like, f-u for being hurt now - this is about ME, not about you. I love you, I didn't leave you, I was about to decide not to leave you anyway, and f-u for all of a sudden being so worried about what I'm doing when before you just left me alone and didn't even know how lonely I was, even though I told you over and over again. Now I have turned myself in to thepsych board, and I'm facing my infidelity in front of a PUBLIC VENUE, BY MYSELF! You can't help me through this, you can't do it for me. I am facing my transgressions BY MYSELF! I am losing my career, and being publicly humiliated. You left me alone before all this happened, leave me alone now, don't try to make me feel guilty for 'putting you through' this!
I realized that was an irrational way to look at it, because OF COURSE it involved him and OF COURSE he had a right to be angry with me. But I told him about it, because it made me feel so much better to understand that angry feeling I had during those beginning weeks of him finding out. I really knew it was irrational but didn't know where it was coming from.
SO. I told SBH about that, and he suggested I read some of the things he wrote about the incident that really started all this. It was January 2002, we'd been together for almost 8 years (married for 5 1/2 years), and we made love one night and I started crying b/c I felt so close to him, but it was painful b/c I'd only ever felt that close to one other person, and I'd never really gotten over the grief/pain of him 'using' me our senior year of college and then dumping me just before graduation. SBH got MAD. He was jealous, and made me feel like I'd done something wrong, when all I was doing was trying to get some support from him. I had trusted him with information about my pain that I had NEVER told anyone, even therapists over the 14 years I'd been in therapy!
Anyway, between that incident and the suicide of my client the summer before that, I was feeling really lonely and incompetent. So, I re-read his journal entries from that time. MAN. He was SO MEAN to me! His anger was so strong, and reading those entries I felt that anger, and it was NO DIFFERENT from the anger he expressed when he found out about the As.
He said, "we no longer have a perfect marriage." He said, "she should have told me she was still carrying a torch for this guy before she took her marriage vows." I remember telling him I felt like he was calling me an adulterer. He said no, but he obviously did not treat me that way.
We had a big long discussion about this the other night. It took me HOURS to convince him that he had treated me as if I were an adulterer, and had never forgiven me for it. I told him I felt like a whore after that, and he said I'd never told him that. But he did remember me telling him I felt like an adulterer and he assured me that I was not. Well, then he said I had been "unfaithful" and he says that's different from adultery. I don not make that distinction.
He was saying I lied when I took my wedding vows. I told him I was just not over the pain of that break up, but it didn't mean I lied during my wedding vows. It took me hours to convince him, and I'm still not sure he gets it. I told him, he doesn't mind that I'm not over being molested (which happened 3 years before this painful breakup), but he can't handle the idea that I'm not over the pain of being used. He said they were different because in one case the guy had power over me and he abused it, and in the other case I was a "willing participant." I said that's like saying "you broke your leg playing football in the front yard, and you got whiplash from being hit from behind while you were stopped at a red light. I can understand why you still have pain from the car accident because that was someone else's fault and you didn't do anything wrong, but you were out there playing football with your friends. You shouldn't have any pain from that." I think that's when he finally got a glimmer of his warped thinking.
Anyway, he did finally apologize sincerely for treating me so badly about the ex-boyfriend thing. And I have a MUCH BETTER understanding of where I was before the 1st affair - feeling lost and alone and humiliated and like an adulterer! And angry about it, but I didn't even know why. He showed me a letter I wrote to him a couple of months after (he demanded a letter of explanation), and when I read it I just said, "that's me taking responsibility for the whole thing, saying you were %100 percent right and I was %100 wrong." He was angry with me for saying that. Now I realize just how accurate that description was - I didn't even think to stick up for myself!
Well, now I DO! And it ended up much better. I felt closer to him yesterday than I have in years. But I still feel wounded about being called an adulterer, and all that has happened since. It is going to take me awhile to trust HIM again. Fine mess to be in, when I did so many things to betray his trust AFTER that...
But we will get through it. He is a good man and he loves me dearly, and he is the one who saved our marriage. He is the one who did the 180 and increased his PMA and held all the hope when I had none.
Anyway, good epiphany for me and for us. Hope others can get something out of it, too...
) how comforting it is to know that MANY of us are working through the same issues, that it's not a sign of "failure" or anything "wrong" with where we're at. 