May, reading this I was both genuinely happy for you that you are sitting in your anger and unleashing it a bit instead of eating it and also genuinely worried about your expectations and how this is manifesting. Your anger is more than righteous. H and AP deserve all the fire you're feeling in their respective directions. 2+ years is a long, long time to be betrayed and deceived. It's long, long time to be fighting against demons you can't see. And now, now you can see it all so clearly. But hindsight my dear is 20/20 and you can't go back and change the past. You can't catch on faster. He can't stop sooner. AP can't get out of your lives any faster. Everything that has happened, has happened. It is what it is, and there is no going back. You can't expect H to get over AP faster. You can't expect H to be disgusted by her. You can't single handedly determine if and when AP is no longer influencing your relationship with H to your liking. You can't pick fights in the middle of the night because you're enraged. I'm sorry my dear you're entitled to your anger, but you aren't entitled to forcing H into the middle of your process. It is no more his job to deal with your rage as it is your job to help him get over AP. The boundaries you two have around this stuff are incredibly hazy and IMHO a huge detriment to the two of you moving forward in either direction.
AP is trash. I will never disagree with that. Someone who knows full well what she's doing to a marriage and children and does it anyway is a garbage person. H was selfish and immature and frankly lazy, just so wrapped up in his own mess that he chose to look outside the MR to fix what wasn't right instead of the looking inward and toward the MR. Those are undisputed facts. And frankly you don't need to feel one iota of compassion for people who are that disgustingly selfish. However, if you want to work on this marriage. If you want to heal and move forward. You can't just sit in the anger and loose it upon the world. My dear, at some point here you have to find forgiveness. Real, true forgiveness. For H, for AP and for yourself.
May, I'm sorry but I still think there is a whole lot of anger at yourself wrapped up in all of this. I know how bright you are. How grounded you are. How centered you are most of the time and being bulldozed with this stuff upsets not only what you thought your MR was, what your future was but a huge chunk of your identity. I think a huge part of the reason I've been able to take a such a 30,000 ft view is because I learned a long time ago allowing bad thing to happen to me, figuring it out way too late isn't about me. However, I spent a very long time wrestling with the idea that things like this were a good chunk my fault. Not in childish idea of "oh this is all my fault." But being genuinely upset with myself for being naïve, for not catching on to intent and motive faster, for letting myself believe in the good in people, for being so stupid, or so soft. For allowing people to use me, mistreat me, to fool me. I know how intelligent I am, how pathetic was I to allow this happen? I think we all end up wondering if we are actually that stupid, that unlovable, that unworthy, and those questions shake what we thought what we knew about ourselves to the core. It's why so much time in the DBing process is spent building yourself back up again. Finding you. Worrying about you. You become unshakable and much more tethered to your identity again when you separate the crisis from who you are. I think it would behoove you to take some time not just writing out your frustrations and playing the blame game, but to genuinely try to take an outsiders perspective and dig into what is really fueling all of this fire. Detangling all of that is going to go a long way in moving forward from this alone or with H.
Also to be clear, I don't think you need to rush to forgiveness, or blow through your negative emotions on this, but at some point here you will need to be the one calling the shots not your feelings. Please understand forgiveness isn't for them. It isn't for them to wipe the slate clean or to be absolved of all their sins. Forgiveness is about making peace with the things you can't change and simply letting all of that heaviness and heartache go, because it doesn't serve you. Because AP and the whole A living rent free in your brain doesn't serve you or your future goals. Because holding on to H not crawling back the way you would've liked or letting AP go on your time table doesn't serve you or your future goals. Because allowing your identity to be shaky in light of all of this doesn't serve you. Forgiveness is a cleansing. A ritual. It closes the doors on things that we may never get the closure on that we want or deserve. It puts us firmly in the driver seat of what we allow to affect us as well as the future of our journey. Forgiveness isn't forgetting. It isn't a cease fire, or a lock box to shove everything into. Forgiveness is a path to moving on that is healthy for you. Neither of them deserve your forgiveness, but you, your heart, your soul and your mind deserve the weight of all this being lifted from you. Forgiveness is a totally selfishly motivated act. It's also the step in the path towards loving kindness.
Reconciling what he did and what he wants now takes time. It takes time on both your parts. And the fact is you may never reconcile them. You may very well have to walk away from this marriage because you can't. But you can't even begin to reconcile those things until you start letting go. Your H the man who stands before you now is not H from 10 years ago. He's not H from 2 years ago. He's not H from 6 months ago. May you're not the May from 10 years ago or 2 years ago or 6 months ago. That's why they call this stuff M 2.0. You aren't the same people. This isn't the same relationship. This is truly starting over. Like a brand new boyfriend, you have to re-learn the ins and outs and he's going to have to learn the new May, and you're going to have to redevelop the dynamics of your relationship, and re-build trust. If you want to move forward you can't keep trying to make this restart fit inside the last game played. I know day to day most days are good days. I know day to day most days are normal, relatively happy, functioning family days. But you've both been so enmeshed in each other's process have you guys ever drawn clear lines where the old relationship ends the new reality begins and the demarcation where M 2.0 lies on the horizon? My H isn't a big talker. So that conversation was one that was never had even though we both started the process. He just stopped doing the stuff he new bothered me and started doing things to make me happy, and I reciprocated. We've since sat down and chatted about how we'd like to be in this new version of us. How we'd like to function for and with each other. Knowing how much he wants to build something better and stronger took us a long way from "ok we're going to try to make this work" to "we're making this work." I know you are doing a ton of work to find your footing after all this trauma, but how much work are you guys putting in to re-build and re-start? Could focusing on that effort in times of anguish, anger, and stress help alleviate some of the bubbling emotions? I don't know, my dear. I know you come here in times of pain so were missing chapters upon chapters of good days. I just worry because I know what you want and I want you to get that if you think that's what's best for you and the little ones.
