Healing or Stuck?

[optimist]

It's the same PTSD dream that I've had all along, through all stages of piecing. Finding out that reconcilliation is a farce, that the A has been going on all along (but they have just gotten better at hiding it) has been my deepest fear all along, so not surprising that my worst nightmare is my worst nightmare.

My other deepest fear is that none of the piecing efforts will matter because there is something broken in him that makes him unsatisfied no matter what he has and that he may be uncapable of having a long-term R.

Well, Tal, we all have that fear. None of us wants to go back to the bomb. We know we would survive, but we know how much it hurts and how it changes you forever. We have lost the kind of innocence about our R that we had and we have to learn to live with the knowledge we have gained by our loss.

My SIL and her partner are with us for a visit. I have been showing them around town and having the most vivid flashbacks... again. It was nearly as bad as a year ago after I discovered the truth about my H's affair. Every time we went to a place there was a memory to negate my initial ones: the apartment we used to live (where OW stayed during the week while I was in San Antonio), the hospital my daughter was born in (while my H was involved with that whore and telling her he was single), Fort Worth (they used to stay at the same hotel we usually stayed at and they went to the Bass Hall together after our separation...)...

We are talking about places that I see all the time, where I had had the flashbacks and they had gone away. I am back to square one, and I suspect my H is having part of the same problem, because he has been very jumpy.

I am not trying to hijack your thread, just point out that we share that fear and it shows as a pattern in the process of healing, not as a particular 'failure' in yours.

My personal answer to the fear riddle came from Acorn, in a post to Sage quite a long time ago. I stole it from her and remind myself of it every time the fear shows up. Works for me... Here it is:

Not trusting my H undermined my self-esteem, made me feel insecure and unsure of myself, and haunted me as I fell asleep, and every time there was some missing time.... It kept real intimacy from returning to our M. Unfortunately, I didn't find the resources to let the past go until the bomb. I was always waiting for him to prove me stupid for having trusted him again... To pull my world out from under me once again... Once the bomb fell, I got over it, I don't know how or why, but it is different now.

This makes me think that the trust issue was about me and my fears about being duped. There has been a real shift here with me about this. At the end of July, after things had been looking up, H got involved with another OW, lied flat out to me about it, asked for a D, and moved in with her a few weeks later. Now, the thing is, he had promised to be honest about what was going on with this stuff, I chose to trust that he would be honest, and then he lied again. But, my reaction was totally different. I was not devastated by his lies, I did not feel like a victim, I did not feel like I was stupid for having trusted him once again. It was my choice to trust him again. I did it for myself and for our M to have a chance. I recognized and accepted the risk. And, when he lied again, my reaction was something like "too bad that didn't pay off, but it was worth the risk..." This was huge for me, and so very different. Why? I think because I gave him trust without also putting my world in his hands. DBing helped me take responsibility for my own happiness, so maybe that is why I could do it.

And there is a portion that partially addresses your other fear also:

I regret that I couldn't do it before, I think it could have made all the difference. You want your H to be your friend and lover, but these things won't come without trust. You might think you hide it well, I thought I did. But, maybe I didn't so well, and it certainly blocked me from taking the leaps necessary for the intimacy in the kind of R I wanted. I wanted to stay safe and have my H cross the intimacy divide alone to get to my side. I felt it was his responsibility to do all the work, that he owed it to me for causing the rift to begin with. So, think of a tightrope. I wanted H to cross the tightrope alone to get to my landing, and thought then we would be where we should be. But, true intimacy only comes when both people take the risk, walk toward each other on the tightrope, and help each other balance in the middle.

I so hope you can find a way to meet your H in the middle. I know you feel that you've done more than your share. I felt the same way. Again with the tightrope--I fooled myself into thinking I'd stepped out, but my lack of trust kept me firmly tethered to my landing.

So, when you fear that he is intrinsecally flawed and your efforts will not be enough, are you sure that you have really stepped into the tightrope? Or are you holding back, trying to protect yourself from the pain you know so well?

H*ll! It is helping me again just to quote it! Thanks Acorn, for your wisdom...

Talista, you know all this, you have done it before. You just need reminding... If, after really stepping into the tightrope and putting your best effort forward, your R does not work, it will be Wolfie's loss, and a sad one. But you cannot protect the people you love from pain or from life. Not if you want to let them live.

But you owe it to yourself to try. So that you will really know you did your best.