I'm the BS. The mind movies are similar to nightmares, only you're awake and there's a possibility that it's true.
At one point my mind movies were so bad that it felt like I was having out of body experiences. Mind movies hijacked my brain and my literal reality.
Reality, this physical world, would evaporate. There would be *nothing* except the mind movie- either the mind movie itself, or the mind movie and my response to the mind movie- a paralyzed horror, feeling like I should know what to do about something so wrong. I should know how to respond, I should know what emergency procedures to implement, but I had absolutely no idea what the appropriate response might be.
I had no tools in my toolbox, other than RUUUUUN!!!
AND I WAS PARALYZED.
I COULD NOT RUN.
I COULD NOT EVEN MOVE.
I COULD BARELY BREATHE.
Deer in the headlights is an understatement.
I realized that I was slipping into The Twilight Zone, i.e. this ain't normal.
I had to be very careful while driving alone for any distance, especially on uncrowded roads without a lot of interruptions or distractions. I'd ruminate endlessly and that was a set up for mind movies. I tried books on CDs. I tried all sorts of music. I tried talk radio. I tried REALLY BAD TALK RADIO. Think Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern and Oprah and Eminen and The Beastie Boys and Q from Star Trek and Salvador Dali got together, had a love child and and then they all gifted him/her/them/it with a talk show. And a skate board. And a bowling alley. And a kitten.
Didn't help.
I'd still find myself ruminating- which, per above, could morph into mind movies like nothing else.
One afternoon after such a road trip, I slipped into a mind movie while backing down our driveway. While staring into my rear view mirror, I backed straight into one of our other vehicles, in broad daylight. Said vehicle was clearly visible and large and in charge right in my rear view mirror. Only, it wasn't. I was watching my mind movie.
I hit the other vehicle hard enough to cause damage.
My husband happened to pull into the driveway right after me. I was a zombie. I remember him looking at the vehicles and looking at me. I remember distinctly the look on his face, like he realized that I was not right.
I just turned and walked into the house.
I literally do not remember the rest of that evening.
I was at my therapist's office bright and early the next morning. I was really concerned that I was no longer safe.
I halfway expected to be institutionalized for the public's safety (catastrophic thinking, I know, but what the hell if that had happened in a parking lot? if I'd backed into a person?) or at least medicated.
We talked it out, THE THERAPIST TOOK A LOT OF NOTES, which kinda freaked me out. I started casing the place for any evidence of a straight jacket, LOL.
He asked me if this had happened before (no) and he pointed out that I had 'spaced out' on familiar territory, our driveway.
I'd spent more that four hours by myself in the car that day, on the road in various driving conditions and on all types of roads and in all kinds traffic, ruminating the entire time.
I didn't let myself 'drift' until I was literally backing down our driveway.
He didn't feel like I was a risk, but we both agreed if anything remotely like that happened again, I'd be on the phone with him stat.
I never did anything like that again.
I was, however, deliberately mindful behind the wheel, around open flame and sharp objects, etc.
The mind movies continued, and they were brutal, but I had a damned good incentive not to let the mind movies fully hijack my brain.
Eventually, without EMDR or medication, the mind movies subsided. I can 'create' a mind movie if I want, even right this moment. I can recall the most prevalent mind movies from that time and I can replay them, but miracle of miracles, however I manifest them, they no longer elicit an emotional response.
For me it just took time, and a reliable sense that my husband was 'getting it,' not rug sweeping, not minimizing, and was addressing the dysfunctions that led us to that place in the beginning.
I probably should have had EMDR or more intensive therapy, and perhaps even medication.
But, they did eventually subside and they did eventually lose their power over me.
"...and have zero fond memories of some of the sexual things they did." ?
This was really, really, really hard for me.
I'm not sure I've ever accepted it, not fully.
How could someone get so mentally and physically turned on such that they are pulled over that bright line of physical infidelity, and they are enjoying the experience and the sensation so much that they facilitate it and prolong it and stay in it for a while...
... and then when the stimulation stops,
BAM! a switch gets flipped, reality dawns, all of the sudden they feel terrible guilt and shame and it's not a turn on anymore. It's a turn off. It's disgusting. Etc. How does that work?
I just don't know how that works.
Eventually, I simply kind of stopped caring. I stopped trying to figure it out. I guess I stopped identifying it as a threat.
Yes, my husband got curious (he says that it began with curiosity) and then, when the physical contact started (early on) he got so aroused so quickly that all higher brain functions left the building. His higher brain functions didn't get traction until he was offered a sex act that stunned him and, in that it was actually offered, and in such a matter of fact, crass manner, actually kinda freaked him out. Like, it was a sudden, abrupt news flash about where he was, what he was doing, what's really going on here.
Even at that it took a bit for his higher brain functions and conscience to get back online. The physical fun stopped escalating but it didn't cease immediately. It took a bit for him to come down from that high.
Anyway.
I've never been a person who has wanted to own another person's, any other person's, arousal.
A variety of things, people, experiences, stimuli turn me on. I assume this is the same for everyone.
I have never believed that our vow literally said, "You are the only person in the world that turns me on."
So, eventually, it was easier for me to sort out NOT being upset about Husband getting aroused.
What initially threatened me was that apparently, he was so aroused by her that he stepped over that line. And then he stayed there for a while. Because, her.
That *was* threatening to me. I definitely took it personally. I was convinced that she had something I did not, and at this age, that I'm not bloody likely to obtain or achieve whatever that was/is. And, I didn't have way back then either. :(
Eventually, with a lot of help from Husband, and from my therapist, and time sitting with myself, and with the whole of my life experience, and with the whole of my own sexual experience both with and without Husband,
I was able to sort out that this incident wasn't all about his degree of arousal.
It was also about availability, and 'a sales pitch,' and adrenaline (I've discussed that before on SI, how adrenaline makes all experiences more vivid) and novelty, etc. etc.
She wasn't some super human source of arousal or stimulus. She wasn't so perfectly his type that she completely cancelled me. She was simply available and she had incentive. The situation itself easily created as much if not more 'pull' than she did.
One might as well pit one's personal attractiveness against the lights and opportunity and rush and novelty of Vegas, with easily available sex on top.
We've talked about this a lot on SI, how a meat and potatoes committed, stable relationship with all of its sturdy, consistent weightiness cannot compete with the ephemeral tease, the calliope siren call and the cheap thrill of the ice cream truck that is an illicit involvement.
It did help me to finally get to a place where, within what were actually some rather large parameters, that woman could have almost literally been any body.
In all fairness, Hubs has said that from the very beginning.
It wasn't 'her,' it was much more the situation.
I can easily see how that is likely true for a huge, huge swath of infidelity, likely most of it.
The people committing infidelity are working out some dysfunction through this specific venue, through this particular mechanism. Likely the AP could have been, within very broad parameters, literally any body.
Anyway, I finally stopped staring at the arousal aspect of it. Of course my husband was aroused. That in and of itself was not the problem, and quite bluntly, not my business. I do not own his arousal. His very essence and what makes him feel alive are his own.
Moreover, he was not so aroused that he lost his mind that night, that he lost total control. It was not all about his arousal. That was only part of the equation.
LOL, in fact, if he's ever been so aroused and so engaged that he lost control, that prize firmly belongs to me. I got a ring and a lifetime vow out of him. LOL. Didn't Meatloaf write a song about that???
No, at that point, the permissions of the situation took over, and his lack of boundaries and protections around the marriage and his absence of empathy for me took over- a concept that we've discussed on SI as a basis for much infidelity.
In fact, it is literally just this moment occurring to me that a HUGE part of his narrative at that time, and his father's narrative for as long as I've known the In Laws, is that 'the marriage stuff' belongs to the wife.
Keeping that shit together and in a sock and within boundaries and parameters belongs to The Wife, to the XO (the executive officer, the second in command.)
The Captain has much, much more important things to do.
And sometimes, The Captain has needs a little recreation.
I do not believe that my husband embraced and was emulating this complete narrative, that he was owed some 'shore leave.'
But I do believe that in this and in many ways, he has assigned 'the marriage' to me.
And in my codependency, I was bringing it.
I was bringing it so well that both of us stopped thinking about it.
And Husband literally forgot, or never realized, that he was responsible for marital boundaries too. He was just as responsible for protecting the marriage as I was, only, he'd assigned that function to me.
It was absence of boundaries much more than any specific person, or body, or body type.
The AP isn't special, the AP is available.
At this juncture the problem boils down to the permissions that the wayward gives himself/herself, and why,
... which is actually the crux of the problem.
[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 6:06 PM, March 25th (Thursday)]