A bit of my story...
When I first found out about my husbands affair I did everything to prove it hadn't happened. We were going on our honeymoon in 8 days and this couldn't possibly have been real.I spent those 8 days frantically searching for the "truth" and hating the woman who had brought this into my life. I was confronted with text messages, phone bills and a whole lot of other stuff that made it impossible to disprove, yet what did I do? I shunted it out of the way and carried on my life as if nothing had happened.
I now know that I knew the real truth and what I was experiencing was cognitive dissonance; that state where the reality intrudes on the internal story and the internal conflict becomes too great to bear so we hide from the truth and deny it.
As I denied the truth I dissociated from it and denied it any space within my heart or head, but that only worked for so long.
It would be two years before I found the courage within me to confront my husband with the truth; two years of intense pain, shame, humiliation, anxiety and complex PTSD symptoms as I bore the brunt of his own toxic shame as he blamed me for the behaviours I was exhibiting: suspicion, jealousy, possessiveness and so on.
It wasn't until we experienced an event so damaging to my psyche that I physically ran away in fear that we were able to begin moving forward.
Coming back from that brink of raw fear and pain was the most excruciating thing I have ever done in my life. I had to finally confront my own demons and recognise that my flight or fight response was always locked into flight mode and if I didn't take a stand for myself, then I'd always stay in flight mode whenever I experienced emotional pain.
This was a breakthrough and was the moment I started to understand how to come back from the brink and reclaim me.
I continue to do that and it's an ongoing process.
We hear you and don't judge.
