Trying2Live-New Post #2

[Trying2live]

I like posting information I get, if you can't tell that already LOL. If it helps me I like to share it, so here's some more I found.It's a little long but has tons of nuggets of gold in there...enjoy...
Extreme Self Care Is Vital
This is a time to slow your life down as much as possible. Pull back, pull in and quiet your mind as often as you can. Do what you feel is best for YOU. Pull back from being everyones caretaker and take care of yourself. What is happening inside of you emotionally is the equivalent to running a marathon every day. It's grueling and exhausting. It's time for you to be a little bit selfish. You don't owe people explanations and you don't have to defend your absence or lack of participation. It's your opportunity to learn how to say no without remorse or apologies. You also don't have to justify your mood or behavior to anyone. Eliminate whatever you can such as volunteer positions and unnecessary activities. If you practice daily health habits such as exercise and eating right, this is not the time to abandon them. Your body needs all the help it can get to stay strong during this time of stress. If you aren't very health conscious this is a good time to start. Just a few basics: drink at least eight cups of water a day, walk or do any physical movement for 30 minutes a day, lay off the junk food and soda and get as much sleep and rest as you can. A few basic health habits will go a long way right now.

Make no long term decisions for at least a year
While you may think you know what you have to do right now you are not in an emotional place to be able to trust your knowing. What things appear to be today is not necessarily what they will appear to be six months from now. You will go through many stages of awareness where your perspectives will most likely change. Sometimes over and over again. How you make decisions and what catalyzes those decisions will most likely change too. The goal is that when you do make decisions they have been made from a solid place and you can trust yourself fully that you are making a confident, informed decision. Knowledge is power and gaining that knowledge takes time.

Be very selective about who you tell
Pain this big is hard to cover up. By allowing others in to witness and share in our pain, it validates the pain. It's natural to want to tell others but these are early days and you are most likely in a highly emotional state right now without discernment of who can and cannot handle information like this in an appropriate way. People who have never experienced infidelity have a lot of judgments about it. When you are on the inside of infidelity you see it from a very different perspective. If someone had told those of us well into reconciliation before we discovered our husbands affairs we'd reconcile with them and forgive them, we would have told them they were nuts! But living it is a completely different thing. There is no way of telling how people will react to the news. Will they gossip? Will it get back to your children in a cruel way? Will they be cold towards your husband as you try to reconcile, damaging your reconciliation efforts? Will they be angry and berate your husband in an inappropriate way? Will they give you bad advice and try to sway you to their way of thinking even though they have no clue about what they are talking about? Will they make it about them and ignore your pain leaving you with more hurt and confusion? Even if you don't choose to reconcile your marriage it's important to announce what has happen in a way that allows YOU to heal and not have your pain in a fishbowl for all to see and judge.

If you choose to tell people make sure they are friends of the marriage. People who care equally for both of you and are vested in and supportive in seeing both of you do what is right for YOU, not them. People who are mature enough to put their own judgments, anger and opinions aside in order to hold a space of healing for both of you. With that said, it is likely there are very few, if any people in your circle who can do this. It's a tall order calling for very open hearted and wise persons. They are few and far between.

You are most likely traumatized
Something that isn't often talked about with regards to infidelity is the trauma factor. For many of us, finding out about our husband's affair put us in a state of trauma and as time went on we experienced post traumatic stress symptoms without knowing it. Many therapists do not address this as part of their treatment. Make no mistake, you have been through a severe trauma as dramatic as a car accident or any other disaster. You will most likely trigger from many things just like the car accident victim triggers into a panic when they hear screeching breaks after their accident. Triggers are common for many of us and they are hell. They hit you anytime and anywhere. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Get checked for STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) NOW!
As hard as it is to bring yourself to do this, do it! Right away and then again six months later. Many men will lie about using protection with the other woman in the beginning. Many of them, even the ones who seem like they are being up front and answering questions openly, will lie about this particular point because they are too ashamed to admit they jeopardized your health along with the humiliation of the affair. They feel its the crushing blow that will end the marriage. Even if you think your husband would be 'smarter than that', do it anyway. We have seen many, many well educated and highly intelligent men be completely stupid around this.

No contact has to be established if you are trying to reconcile your marriage
The affair has to be ended with you, the betrayed spouse, as a witness. It is important that your husband either writes a letter or calls the other woman ending all contact. It is important that he lets her know that you know all about the affair and it is over. Under no circumstances is she to contact him and if she does he will be informing you, the betrayed wife. The letter should be mailed in your presence or the phone call made in your presence. This does not guarantee they will refrain from contacting one another but it gives your husband a clean slate to move forward in reconciling the marriage if he chooses.

You are not crazy for staying in the marriage
One of the biggest things we struggle with as betrayed wives is wondering if we are crazy for staying with a man who has lied, cheated, rendered you and your children as insignificant in his quest for self gratification and above all broken sacred promises made in marriage vows. You are not crazy. Instead you are being prudent. Disassembling years of a marriage in the flash of a moment is not wise. And if you throw him out it is unlikely you'll ever get the answers or information you need to heal. Remember, knowledge is power.

If you're going to reconcile then you need to try to plant both feet in it
As hard as it may be, reconciling takes an incredible amount of commitment. At some point you will have to begin to take a look at your contribution to the deterioration of your marriage. It's obvious what he's done but often we, the betrayed spouses, were contributing without even knowing it. It is important to be able to start taking that in as a possibility. The alternative is to position yourself as a victim and stay there. Reconciliation can never happen from that place. And even if you don't reconcile, you can never heal from that place. It's normal and it's OK to feel victimized in the beginning. You have been in a big way! But by only having your victim ears and eyes open you will not be able to hear important things your husband may be telling you about what he's feeling or felt before he started the affair. Try to work at opening yourself to your role in the disintegration of your marriage. There is a solid distinction in that you had no role in his choice to have an affair but you may well have had a role in what was happening in the marriage that led him to having an affair. The affair is all on him though. The disintegration of your marriage is on both of you. This is where you need to focus your attention as much as possible if you're trying to reconcile. As much as your brain is screaming to get the details and you feel your salvation will come from having those details, the true salvation comes from going back and understanding what happen in your marriage that led to this as well as what is in your family of origin dynamics that contributed to this. This work can only be done with a well trained and qualified therapist.