Difficult to move on and work on my marriage

[sage]

Kimiko,

I'm 2.5 years past finding out about my h's ea and have definitely found that my anger and resentment and hurt have abated as the months have gone by. It hasn't been a straight shot...I've have weeks or more where I was feeling great and then found myself back in the weeds again for a week or more...where my thoughts just seemed obsessive about the ow and h. In my case, I know the ow and had had plenty of opportunity to see h and ow together (before knowing about the ea) so for better or worse, I had plenty of "pictures" to run through my head.

Thought stopping helped me some (the use of the stop sign technique though I took it a bit further...when I was having thoughts I'd picture packing ow into a box and throwing her out of a moving car! Yikes!).

I read a lot on forgiveness ("The Art of Forgiving" by Smedes, "How Can I forgive you" by Spring). I learned to meditate and do so often (Jack Kornfield is my favorite guided meditation teacher -- he has a wonderful CD Beginner's guide to forgiveness and many wonderful books and tapes).

I've also recently read a good book called "Self-Coaching" by Luciani. It's a simple read -- basically that the voices in your brain that are encouraging you to focus on negative thoughts or images are the product of your "insecure child" and if you can label them as such, you can stop them.

Other things? Exercising, eating right, doing positive things for myself and with h. NOT beating myself up if I hit a low (sometimes it was the "story" -- a la, "I can't believe you're not over this" that was the worst part). And time.

It sounds like you have a lot going for you and that h is very open to working with you. That's awesome.

Sage