Surviving Infidelity

A journal entry from January 23, 2015   Last night I dreamed that Joe still had secrets. If I believed that it will make me crazy. As devastating as it was to find out he had an affair, it was even more upsetting when I learn ed there were more secrets. I thought I knew this man better than anyone else and it turned out, I didn’t know him at all. It's the secrets that break my heart. That's why honesty is so important. What I don’t know, can make me crazy. The not-knowing fuels my imagination. I review things over and over in my mind trying to envision the things did and talked about with other women. Each time I learn something from Joe’s past I can think of a dozen different ways to adjust my understanding of it.  Someone wrote that sexual betrayal is like a puzzle with pieces missing. We will never know every detail. We weren’t there. In my dream, it was the thought of secrets that startled me awake. He promised -no more secrets. Last night Joe shared a

From my Journal dated January 21, 2016 I used to feel loved and valued. Joe was my mirror.  The love I saw in his eyes was a reflection of who I am.  I must be the most amazing person because this man chose me and shows me  every day  how much he loves me.   When my mirror shattered, when I realized there was a whole other side to my husband that I didn’t know about, my self-worth disintegrated like shards of glass.  My sense of self vanished.  With each new disclosure my mirror splintered and my fear grew.  I was lost without that mirror. Without it I didn’t know who I was. Even now, two years later, when Joe mentions a temptation it pulls me back.  It doesn’t matter that he's turned away from the temptation.  I am still afraid. The beliefs I had about my husband and what I meant to him are gone. I just realized those are two separate things. My beliefs about Joe are not the same as my value to him. My value has never changed.  He has always loved me.  His heart got clouded

A journal entry from  December 24, 2013   It's Christmas Eve and I’m sitting here afraid to begin this writing.   A fraid to open my frozen heart to the rush of emotion I know is sure to break through if I allow myself to really understand what has been going on in my life for … how long?   Joe said a few months.     Joe has been having an emotional affair for a few months. Instead of dealing with this I started googling, “Is it really an affair if there is no sex?”   T he answer is yes and it can be much more damaging than a fling.   I’m sick.   Why did he need this?   I think I'm crazy. I want to sweep it under the rug and curl up in his arms.   I want Joe to make it better.   I want him to say all of those comforting loving things that show how much he loves me.   I’m in denial. I want him to protect me from this awful thing that has happened but he's the one who did it.   He is my abuser.   I understand the wife who keeps going back to her abusive husband.