For me its questioning my reality. It's the triangulation he gives me and how he sounds so convinced when he says these things about me.
I can so relate to this. If I hadn’t started taking notes after any major interactions with her so I could talk them out with my therapist I don’t know if I would have been as confident in my view of reality sometimes. She would always seem so convinced that what she was saying was right even when I knew that wasn’t what happened at all. It’s crazy how they can distort your sanity with a few words.
I think illness or not, what we struggle with is what they have done, we cant just comprehend how anyone could do what they have, therefor I feel like I stay in some sense of denial with what has happened.
I understand this too. I kept making allowances for her. I was sure I must have misunderstood, or that I was thinking of the worst possible outcome and I’d feel guilty that I had thought that way, only for it to come out later that I was absolutely right in my suspicions. Even then I would keep making excuses for her. I didn’t want to believe that the woman I had thought of as the most trustworthy, the closest person to me could possibly be doing all those horrible things with no good reason. Ultimately there weren’t any good reasons. That didn’t stop her from telling me her reasons and telling me it really was all my fault each time. Thankfully I know better and told her so.
They're not part of our lives any more, they are our past and I dont need to keep being reminded of it. I have the self discovery and trauma to keep me reminded, I dont need it to keep being reenacted for me. This does all take time and as sad as this makes me, I remind myself that the contacts makes me feel crap, but the contact I had around him and his people for so long made me feel suicidal. It's a massive step when I think back to the place I was when I was with him. Id rather be lonely than hating the core of my being and feeling so worthless any day of the week.
I know! It’s hard enough dealing with the swirling emotions, the reminders at home and the conversations with our therapists without having to have them throw crap in our faces all the time. I plan to go NC very soon, just after the divorce paperwork has been signed and filed.
How are you getting on?
I have my good days and my bad. To quote my response to someone who asked me the same question yesterday:
”I’ve had my ups and downs. For the most part I think I’m doing well, but there are moments when I’m just broken over what’s been lost. It’s usually when I spend too much time trying to understand the entire situation. I should know better, but it still happens. I tend to be very analytical so it’s a major brain malfunction for me when I run into something that I just cannot understand at all. I had made it the mission of my life to understand, support and predict my wife’s behaviour, and now it seems that so much of what I “knew” was a lie, and there’s no explanation as even she doesn’t fully understand it.
I keep reminding myself that I can only be responsible for me and not analyze too much, but that doesn’t always work. Laugh out loud (click to insert in post)
I’ve been having conversations with people living on my street and that’s helped a little. (which is SO not normal for me to do. I’m not a huge people person, I tend to like to stick close to home and to some of my friends, but since my “home” isn’t really feeling like home right now, and my friends have been working two jobs to make ends meet, I’m low on options when it comes to social interactions.) All that text to say it’s been kinda lonely lately. My boys tend to sleep during the day and disappear a lot in the evening to spend time with their friends, so the house feels mostly empty these days.”
