Nice job not bring up any potential infidelity talks. You asked H a couple of weeks ago and he said there was no one else. He could be lying, or he could be telling the truth. Both of which you cannot control. You can only control three things - your thoughts, actions, and reactions.
I do understand and empathize with your current runaway emotions and thoughts of negative outcomes. Us folks are so well versed at seeing negatives and predicting or extrapolating or imagining negative outcomes.
You can control your thoughts. You are in command of your rational self. One of the strategies for finding detachment is to rationalize one’s emotional triggers and bindings. Fear is usually at the root of such tying between feelings and thoughts.
To find detachment it helps to realize what it is you are working towards. Detachment is when one is no longer uncontrollably emotionally dragged around by the words, actions, and/or behaviours of their spouse.
A key point of detachment is the uncontrollably part. Detachment brings about control of what is presently runaway emotions and thoughts. You can and will still feel, just not be dragged around. As I said, fear is usually at the heart of this. It’s scary to let go. However, let go or be dragged.
Detachment is not an overnight process. It takes time to rationalize and realize one’s feelings and why one feels/fears what they do.
The feeling of fear is the non-rational response to an imagined hurtful future. A fear response is perfectly normal. Part of a well evolved survival response - fear or flight. One gets a jolt of adrenaline to either run or fight the saber-toothed tiger. Problem is, the tiger happened weeks/months ago, yet you are still reacting to it.
This is again, normal and common for folks facing such relationship/martial uncertainties. Not particularly mentally or emotionally healthy, yet normal and common nonetheless. Our evolved world has little physical attacks like tigers and such, yet our instincts still exist and react to threats - real and perceived.
This is where fear ensnares one. Fear is insidious and paralyzing with its tentacles and enveloping darkness. A feedback of fear to an imagined possible future outcome. Such response lives outside of rational thought.
So, back to control. You control your thoughts. And thought can influence one’s emotions. Just as one’s emotions influence their thoughts. You exert you direct control of thought to purposefully rationalize and thus sever the irrational tie/grip of fear.
How? Realize that anxious and panicked comes from living in the future. By the way, one living in the past feels depressed. So, you anchor yourself into the present. Deal with the things of present day, leaving the future to unfold. I do remember that is a pretty tall order when starting out.
Of course emotions need to be expressed. Do so in a safe and healthy manner. Work through your feelings. Physical activity is really good for releasing one’s feelings and clearing one’s mind. A walk or run, gardening, go to the gym, a punching bag, scream into a pillow, and so on. Somewhere safe and away from H and kids.
Part of this control / detachment comes with scheduling times to feel one’s emotions. I totally get how uncontrollably one does cry. In time, we start to control or defer our feelings throughout the day. To balance that, schedule time in the morning, say ten minutes, to just feel whatever you feel. Cry it out, then at the alarm, go about your day. That may require a few times throughout the day for a while until you get down to just one time a day. And then, no times a day.
Detachment happens like most things, slowly, and when one isn’t “trying” too hard to achieve it.
You will be ok M.
D
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
