I had a fun one last week.
My current BF's parents live in my neighborhood. He was over at their house doing some home improvements in the afternoon, and I had to run to the pharmacy. While headed out of the neighborhood, I got stuck behind a car going REALLY slow, so I took a route different than my normal way. It happened to take me right past the road his parents live on. While cruising down the road towards my BF's parents house, I had this entire thought process and realization:
I thought to myself, "If I cruise by that house, and there's some cute girl car parked in front of the house and his truck, this time, I will not hesitate. I will not be afraid to confront given the first shadow of a doubt. I will not be fooled again like I was with the ex."
Now mind you, my BF is ever so steady and open and he has never for one moment given me any reason to mistrust him. And I never had thought patterns like this before I was traumatized by infidelity. I trusted my XWH implicitly before I found out what kind of person he really was.
But here I am, 18 years out of that horrible marriage, and my thought processes still have not returned to pre-D day conditions, and I doubt they ever will.
But it was eye-opening that I still have those fixin-for-a-fight worst-case-scenario thought patterns, even after all these years.
I've decided that it may be time to un-learn that constant defensive stance that was essential to surviving infidelity. While I will never be all-trusting or naive again, I will stop allowing the tape to play one more time and immediately prepare for battle. Next time, I'll think about the fact that it'd be nice, if his truck is there, to pull a quick left turn and plant one hell of a kiss on him to brighten his afternoon.
BTW, his truck wasn't there, nor was any cute girl car, so I prepared for a battle that didn't even occur. I'm going to work on only preparing for battles that actually have a reason to occur.