New beginnings, old intrusive thoughts
Hello all! Happy 2021 to you.
I'm curious if others have experienced the feelings I'm currently having, as I try to assess how much more therapy to save up for. :)
Context: 2 years from separation and I've grown a lot in this interval. I'm in a good place. My D-Day involved a long term (4+ years) physical affair with a good friend of mine, and what I would call emotional affairs with one other friend of mine, as well as knowledge of the affair among other friends of mine, so it was laced with quite a bit of betrayal and required a lot of therapy to move past.
Since then I've dated a few times, and have had an on-again-off-again relationship with one woman who I wrote about in the past here. I described her as a bit erratic at that time.
What happened was this: we were kind of dating again but telling one another it was temporary and that we would see other people when the pandemic restrictions eased. I would say the relationship is/was pretty asymmetric at this point, her having very nearly died in late 2020 and trying to get literally and figuratively back on her feet this year. While we were basically in love with one another, I was also mainly filling the role of a supportive friend during her recovery. Yes, plenty to psychoanalyze on my end there, but not the subject of this thread, so for now we'll just call this dysfunctional and move on.
So eventually she found a guy on Tinder and started hanging out with him "casually." Unfortunately, this guy, of the hundreds of matches she got, is a reasonably good friend of mine. I would say my reaction to this was not so much "what are the chances you'd match to a friend of mine" as "*of course* you'd match to a friend of mine," in the sense that she seems to attract this kind of drama if I'm being honest.
Now, there's a whole story here about how I did technically give a very half-hearted kind of permission for this in an effort to respect the two of them and not interfere in her rebuilding her life after a critical illness, but in the interest of saving time I'll just jump to the point:
When she finally declared that she did want a relationship with him, I suddenly found myself with many of the same feelings I had after my own D-Day: a kind of disgust at the thought of both of them, frankly intrusive thoughts/images of them having sex, talking about me behind my back and sharing intimate details, etc etc. Total breakdown of trust and extreme guardedness.
She wants to remain "friends" or on talking terms and I've told her that's just not an option because of how uncomfortable I feel around them. It's not at all my goal to end what they have or get even in some way - on the contrary this is in some ways an opportunity for me to move on from a situation which was in many ways bad for me, but I'm considering going back to therapy for these deeply-felt recurrent negative emotions which sometimes bring me to the point of nausea.
So I suppose I'm wondering: have others experienced acute, unexpected triggers like this after separation - and I'm not so much talking about being cheated on again, which would obviously be triggering, but instead in other situations in life/relationships where you didn't necessarily expect it to rear its head?
Hope that makes sense and have a wonderful week.
6 comments posted: Wednesday, February 17th, 2021
New beginnings, old hangups.
Hello all!
First I want to apologize for sporadically coming on here in the past 6-12 months to post and then bailing without engaging much in the replies. I was just very depressed. I think I also developed a love/hate relationship towards support groups because I was very committed to taking some kind of high road and not defining myself in terms of the affair and separation.
I'm a bit more whole now and back in semi-regular counselling. My separation was over 18 months ago. She cheated for 4.5 years with my son's best friend's dad, with worse to follow after I found out in 2018. So much water under the bridge.
I earn a lot more than her. We have enormous family debts because she didn't work when I was in school, and we had kids, so I took out huge loans to cover living expenses. *All* these debts are mine now, and I have a massive support obligation on top of that. She's developed a view of the world in which I am the sole reason she has no stable career all these years later. It's an easily accepted view for most of our mutual friends, like an easily recognized motif in our culture. As it is with everything, there's a hint of truth to it in a limited way, but now it's been weaponized beyond recognition. We were inches away from a separation agreement this month, and now with some clever/shady math, her lawyer is attempting to claw back almost all of my equity in our jointly owned home (which she resides in and which I was selling to her at a steep discount). She's accusing me of hiding assets that were documented in plain sight from day one. She is distorting things dramatically - for example claiming that she has been watching them for me 30-40 hours per week during the pandemic, while the correct number is 0 to 10 hours per week made up for by evenings and overnights I'm taking in lieu. My ex doesn't even realize what's happening because her understanding of the accounting is not good, so she keeps telling me I'm confused/uninformed/etc. I'm sure this is all driven by an understandable fear of her own future. Maddening though.
I'm finding myself at a new low because that was my shot at having a down payment for a home, and now it has fizzled away and isn't likely to return soon because of my debt obligations. As a physician I know my life is very privileged. But while being unable to afford a home at this point in my career is really frustrating, being called a "cheat" at the same time is just intolerable.
I dated for about six months, as you can see my previous posts on this where most of you advised me to run away. Yeah, it was a bit rocky. In the end, the relationship was worthwhile, but it ended in a mess after she had a nervous breakdown because of some unrelated issues she was facing. She's seeing a psychiatrist and is on medications now, and I'm sure she'll be fine, but I had to make a hard choice to keep my distance for my own sake and for my kids.
So, I'm back to struggling with some things I thought I'd put to rest, and back to the forum. New Beginnings because I don't want to backtrack to the Separation forum.
Struggling with the frustration of watching her claim to be working collaboratively, telling friends and family that she is being extraordinarily generous and is allowing me to "cheat" her out of her "entitlement," while her actual legal correspondence has suddenly become steeped in provocation and lies and distortions. It shifted from collaborative to adversarial so fast. My own lawyer was taken aback and explained that this is typical of the specific lawyer she hired.
Struggling with other people in general as a result. I'm back to feeling suspicious of anyone who knows her and isn't repulsed by her. If I see a friend chatting with her on her porch, my automatic first thought is, "so long, sucker."
Struggling again with the basic fact that I kept relatively quiet about her lies and infidelity. I'm still committed to not widely advertising that because of the children and in the interest of collaborative negotiation, but f***, people do not know one tenth of the story.
Struggling with loneliness, but also not interested in being around people really right now, other than my kids whom I adore more than ever. I'm struggling to decide whether this is pathological or necessary for this stage of my life. Not sure if I should be pushing myself to socialize like I did last year, or working on accepting myself as I am, an introvert who likes to go on solo hikes and meditate and read books on my evenings off from parenting.
Struggling with the idea of ever "taking care of anyone" ever again. I really made some poor choices with respect to providing for another individual who I cared about. I have to believe there are partners out there who value their own independence and don't see relationships as markers of status or a means to financial freedom - it's just that some days I have my doubts and don't want to bother because I feel I'm likely to be deceived.
This time I'm posting to hear if this "second wave" (covid-speak) of self-doubt and frustration rings true for anyone else. I really want to find the path that does not define me in terms of feeling taken advantage of. At the same time I think I'm lacking some validation that yes, I'm being taken advantage of, and that's important to recognize in a way. But that's so tricky, because I don't want to be a broken record with a friend, I don't want to be seen as "the bitter guy," etc, so I limit that to therapy mostly. Right now I'm exploring mindfulness and some Eastern philosophy in some depth - non-dual awareness, self-compassion/metta, etc - and I think it's a good way forward for me, but I could use some perspective from others who have gotten through this.
23 comments posted: Wednesday, July 1st, 2020
