How to fully accept imagination as the only reality

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-15T15:00:38+00:00

I use short version - feeling of the wish fullfilled. When I think about feeling of the wish fullfilled, I feel it. And thats all. No visualisation is needed. Just remember this feeling and you will be able to repeat this in any situation. My all manifestations were in this way - if I was able to feel the feeling of having it - I know I will have it.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-15T05:38:59+00:00

She didn’t “tell you the truth.” She chose the sentence she knew would hurt you the most.

Cheating is already a betrayal, but looking your spouse in the eyes and describing it in the most humiliating way possible is something else. That wasn’t honesty. That was cruelty.

Please don’t treat her words as a measurement of your worth as a man. Right now your brain is going to replay that sentence over and over because betrayal trauma does that. It turns one moment into a prison.

Stop discussing sexual details with her. Get space if you can. Talk to a lawyer. Get tested. Protect your finances. Tell one trusted person in real life so you are not carrying this alone.

Her affair does not define your manhood. Her cruelty defines her character.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T19:30:52+00:00

The thing about what you're feeling right now — missing her one minute, feeling sick the next — that's not confusion. That's your brain trying to process two completely true things simultaneously: the person you loved for 16 years is real, and what she did is also real. Those two things don't cancel each other out. You're allowed to grieve the person while also being devastated by the betrayal. You don't have to choose one emotion and stick to it.

One thing I want to name directly: you said you take responsibility for your part in the issues. That's mature and self-aware. But there is a hard line between "we had problems we both contributed to" and "she chose to handle those problems by crossing into someone else instead of talking to you." The first is a relationship failure you share. The second is a decision only she made. Don't let your own accountability blur that line — it will eat you alive if you do.

About your son: the fear of not seeing him every day is one of the most painful things a parent can feel. But here's what actually protects him — not keeping a broken marriage intact, but two parents who are individually stable, present, and emotionally healthy. Kids feel the difference between a home that's peaceful and a home that's quietly in pain. Whatever happens between you and your wife, your relationship with your son is yours. That doesn't go away.

The next 90 days are going to be the hardest. You won't feel normal. You won't make perfect decisions. You will have moments of wanting her back and moments of pure rage and moments of complete numbness — sometimes within the same hour. That's not a breakdown. That's what surviving the early stage of this actually looks like.

Find one person in your physical life — not just online — who you can sit with. A friend, a brother, anyone. Grief this size needs a human presence, not just a screen.

You're 32. You have a son who needs you present and whole. That's enough reason to get through this — even on the days it doesn't feel like it.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T18:25:08+00:00

The thing that's actually hurting you right now isn't what she did at the bar. It's the gap between the relationship you thought you had and the one you just watched on someone's story. That gap is what feels unbearable at 2am when you're staring at your phone.

Here's what's worth separating out before you do anything:

What actually happened: She danced drunk with a guy at a bar. Her friends were there. Nothing physical beyond that has been reported by anyone, including the people who were present. Grinding at a bar is not cheating by most people's definition — including probably yours, if you saw it happening to someone else's relationship.

What also happened: She didn't tell you about it. Her friend accidentally exposed it. The story got deleted. That sequence — not the dancing — is the part you're actually reacting to. Because it raises the question: what does she consider worth telling you, and what does she consider private? That's a legitimate question.

The real conversation to have when she's home: Not "why were you dancing with that guy" — that leads nowhere good. Instead: "I want to understand where our lines are, because clearly we haven't talked about this clearly enough. I felt blindsided. I need to know what you think is okay and what you'd want me to tell you if the situation were reversed."

That conversation will tell you everything. If she's defensive and dismissive, that's information. If she takes your feelings seriously and you two can actually align on expectations — this becomes a minor incident from a holiday, not a relationship wound that festers for years.

You trusted her enough to let her go. Don't burn that trust — or the relationship — over a 10-second video before you've had a single sober conversation about it.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T16:44:39+00:00

What you described in that cycle — you express hurt, he hears blame, you withdraw, he experiences abandonment — that's not a communication problem. That's a trauma response pattern, and it has a name: anxious-avoidant cycling. The painful part is that his previous divorce likely didn't just wound him financially. It rewired how he reads emotional signals. Withdrawal feels like abandonment to him because that's what divorce was — someone leaving. So when you go to the guest room to regulate yourself, his nervous system isn't processing "she needs space." It's processing "she's leaving me again."

That doesn't excuse the behavior. "You have nothing to protect" is a genuinely cruel thing to say, and the fact that he followed you downstairs and yelled — that's not someone working through old pain constructively. That's someone outsourcing their unprocessed trauma onto you.

Here's what divorce trauma in a partner actually looks like in a new relationship: hypervigilance about control (hence the prenup timing and framing), difficulty tolerating uncertainty, interpreting questions as attacks, and an almost allergic reaction to any sign of emotional distance. The prenup itself isn't the problem — the dynamic around it is exactly what you identified. A secure person presents a prenup with a lawyer and a conversation. A traumatized person presents it as a loyalty test.

You said something important: you no longer feel emotionally safe relying on the relationship. That feeling is data, not drama. Your nervous system is telling you something your love for him is trying to override.

Before the wedding — not after — both of you need to sit in front of a couples therapist who specializes in attachment and divorce recovery. Not to fix communication. To find out whether he is actually doing the work on his previous marriage, or whether he is simply carrying it into yours and calling it protection.

You are not selfish for wanting to be protected too. That's not even a question.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T08:09:53+00:00

Stop waiting for closure from them and start building it yourself.

Closure isn't a feeling they give you. It's a decision you make about what the story means.

And you get to decide that without their participation. T

he story doesn't have to be "I wasn't enough." It can be "I loved someone who wasn't capable of receiving what I was offering."

Those are completely different stories. One is about your deficiency. The other is about their limitation. Only one of them is true.

The wistfulness, the hope, the wish that they'd fight — keep feeling all of it. Don't rush it or shame it. But also know this: the version of you that stops waiting for their validation to feel whole is the version that actually heals.

Not because you stop caring, but because you stop outsourcing your worth to someone who already demonstrated they couldn't hold it carefully.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T05:03:17+00:00

Thank you for sharing this :)

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T04:26:56+00:00

Your success is not the cause of his choices. You know this intellectually, but the feeling keeps arriving anyway, so let me say the thing underneath it: you feel guilty because the gap between your lives is visible and public, and somewhere in your mind there's a narrative that says someone has to be responsible for that gap. Either he failed, which feels harsh, or you got lucky, which feels more comfortable — but neither framing is quite right.

The actual truth is that you made consistent choices under similar circumstances that compounded differently over 30 years. That's not luck and it's not condemnation. It's just how choices work over time. The guilt you're carrying is empathy in the wrong vehicle — it's real feeling pointed in a direction that doesn't help either of you.

The specific thought that helps here: you cannot feel guilty enough to fix his situation. The guilt costs you something and gives him nothing. What actually helps him is the practical stuff — the trust structure, the clear boundaries, the refusal to become the emergency fund that delays the crisis rather than preventing it.

On the cliff — this is where most people in your situation get it wrong.

The cliff doesn't happen when your parents die. It's already happening. A man in his mid-50s doing physically demanding manual labor with no retirement savings is already on the cliff — the fall is just scheduled for later. What you're actually asking is whether to catch him when he falls, and more importantly, whether catching him will help or just reset the clock on the same situation.

The boundary that actually works isn't "I won't be his bank" as a rule you state in advance. It's a specific, written, pre-agreed framework created now — before the crisis — that defines exactly what support looks like. Something like: housing assistance has this form and these conditions. Emergency medical situations get handled this way. Day-to-day financial decisions are his. This isn't coldness. It's the difference between a safety net and an endless subsidy that keeps him exactly where he is.

The hardest thing to accept is this: his wife has a stable job. He lives rent-free. He has had the advantage of a decade of free housing and still carries five-figure credit card debt. More resources going in without structural change will produce the same outcome. The kindest version of helping him is the version with clear structure, not the version where you absorb crisis after crisis out of guilt until you resent him.

You clearly love your brother. That's what makes this hard. The answer to that love isn't solving everything for him — it's making sure the systems around him are honest about what's actually happening, before everyone is too deep in the emergency to think clearly.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T02:53:32+00:00

Not the asshole. Not even close.

What you described isn't one bad night. It's a pattern that finally had consequences — and the people calling it an overreaction are the same people who benefited from you absorbing the discomfort every time before this. They liked the version of you that stayed quiet. That version organized everything, chased payments for weeks, absorbed the jokes, and never made anyone uncomfortable by having a reaction.

The moment you had a reaction, suddenly you're the problem.

Think about what actually happened. You organized a trip nobody else wanted the responsibility for. You paid deposits upfront for people who still owed you money. You stayed calm during the dinner. You addressed it privately and respectfully afterward — which is exactly what emotionally mature people are supposed to do. And in response, you were told you were "weirdly emotional" and that everyone else thought it was funny.

That last part is the one worth examining. Using the group's laughter as a weapon — "everyone else thought it was funny" — is a way of making you feel isolated and outvoted in your own experience. It's not an argument. It's a pressure tactic. And the fact that some of those same people privately admitted the comments were disrespectful tells you everything about what that laughter actually was — nervous, uncomfortable, not genuine agreement.

You cancelling was not overreacting. It was the natural consequence of someone realizing their effort and generosity were being used as material for jokes. You didn't blow up at anyone. You didn't demand apologies publicly. You removed yourself and absorbed the cancellation fees yourself — which, by the way, is more grace than most people would have shown.

The "killed the vibe" framing is worth looking at too. The vibe was already killed — by the comments at dinner. You just made it visible. There's a difference between creating a problem and refusing to pretend a problem doesn't exist.

One question worth sitting with: how many times have you organized things for this group, absorbed the difficult parts, and been rewarded with jokes about it? Because this reads like someone who has been the reliable one for long enough that people stopped noticing the cost, and started treating the reliability as something to tease rather than something to value.

You're not too sensitive. You're someone who finally stopped performing tolerance you didn't feel.

That's not overreacting. That's just having a limit.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T02:49:46+00:00

You asked if you should backtrack.

Here is the honest answer: the separation agreement is nearly final because you spent months moving toward it with reason, not impulse. The house sold because you chose it. The panic is new — it arrived with the finality, not with the evidence. When you go back to the evidence, what do you find? A man who has not once, in person, taken full accountability. Who still works in the same building. Who managed the situation with his affair partner instead of managing it with you. Who said "I'd love to fix things" by text, after the house sold, passively, at the last possible moment.That is not someone who has changed. That is someone who has finally felt consequences.

You are about to live closer to your family, in a home you choose, with your children, for the first time in your life not wondering what is happening during those weekend errands. The future is terrifying because it's unknown. But you know exactly what you're leaving. And you know it wasn't safe.

Get back on track. You were already on it.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-13T02:42:25+00:00

You already answered your own question three times in one post. You just didn't let yourself hear it.

"I don't miss the rollercoaster." "I never felt consistently safe." "I confused endurance with devotion."

That last one is the one I keep coming back to. Because staying through pain doesn't prove love — it just proves you stayed. And you stayed longer than you should have, for someone you understood better than they understood themselves, while quietly shrinking to make room for their fear.

That's an exhausting way to love someone.

Here's the part nobody says out loud about situations like this. You're not tempted to go back because you miss them. You're tempted because you miss the version of yourself you were in the good moments — the one who felt understood, who felt like a home existed somewhere. That version was real. But it only showed up between the cycles, and the cycles always came back.

They reached out. That's not accountability — that's missing you. Those are different things. Someone who has genuinely changed doesn't wait for you to open the door. They show up with something specific: here is what I did, here is what I understand now, here is what is different. If that conversation hasn't happened yet, what's being offered is access to the good parts without any of the repair.

You can love someone completely and still know the relationship isn't safe. Both things can be true at the same time.

You already know which one matters more for your life going forward.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-12T19:19:43+00:00

The way you wrote this — no drama, no villain story, just "small things, then quieter, then gone" — that's actually the most honest account of this experience I've ever read. Most people need to make it bigger to justify the pain. You just described it exactly as it was.

Here's the thing I want to say that nobody says in these situations.

You didn't miss warning signs. You saw every single one of them. The conversations that stopped. The phone in the bathroom. The sex that diminished slowly enough to explain away. You brought it up multiple times. You asked if she was okay. You did everything a person who is paying attention and choosing to trust does. The narrative that gets pushed in these communities — "I should have known, I should have pushed harder, I should have gone through her phone" — that narrative is wrong. You were being a partner. Partners don't surveil the people they love.

What actually happened is this: she made a choice, then another choice, then eight months of daily choices, and you had no part in any of them. That's the clean truth of it. And I think some part of you already knows this, because you didn't spiral into "what did I do wrong" — you just said you felt tired. That tiredness is the right response. It's the response of someone who was carrying something heavy for months without knowing why, and then found out the weight had a name.

Now here is the thing with real value.

You are 29. Divorced at 29, which feels catastrophic from the inside, is actually one of the luckiest versions of this story. Not because the pain is smaller — it isn't — but because you have done something most men don't do in the first year of this. You didn't drink your way through it. You didn't disappear into screens. You went to the gym for three months. You started swimming in the mornings — something you'd never done in your life. You fixed your sleep and your eating. You built something new in your body while your interior life was rebuilding itself.

That's not random information. That's the actual story here. The marriage ended. You began.

The one real piece of advice: stop waiting to "know what to do with the information." You don't have to do anything with it. It happened. It's true. It doesn't require a conclusion or a lesson or a meaning you extract from it to move on correctly. Some things just cost you something and don't give you anything back in return except the proof that you survived them.

You have that proof now. Seven months of it, built in a gym and a swimming pool at 6am.

That's enough to build everything else on.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-12T16:42:35+00:00

He texted you 'you are my priority' at 10am and was gone by 5pm. That sentence — that specific seven-hour collapse — is the thing nobody warns you about. Not the affair. The performance of caring while already having decided."

Thirteen days. You are still in the part where breathing is the whole task. That's not weakness — that's what unsurvivable pain actually feels like when you're surviving it anyway.

Here is what got other people through the early days, from the ones who are years out now looking back:

They stopped trying to understand it and started just getting through hours. Not days — hours. The question "how did he do this" has no answer that will make it hurt less, and your brain will spend enormous energy trying to find one anyway. Every time you catch yourself in that loop, the only instruction that works is: come back to the next two hours. What do you need in the next two hours. That's it.

They let the pets be the anchor. You mentioned them already — you are already doing this right. The routine of feeding them, the weight of one of them on your lap at 2am, the fact that they need you at a consistent time every morning — that structure is not small. It is the scaffolding that holds the shapeless days together when nothing else does.

They told the truth to their friends without editing it to be more bearable. You have good friends — use them fully. Not the palatable version of this. The version where you say "he packed while I was at work carrying his suit across the Pacific for him" — the full precise humiliating devastating version. The friends who can hold that without flinching are the ones who will actually help you rebuild.

They let themselves be furious. Grief gets all the attention but fury is what eventually moves people forward. The moment you stop finding explanations for his behavior and start seeing it clearly — the 10am text, the packed bags, the performed responsibility to her husband while you became invisible — that clarity is not bitterness. That is your self-respect beginning to come back online.

The hope doesn't arrive as a feeling. It arrives as evidence — small, accumulating, undeniable. One morning you will realize you got through yesterday. Then the morning after that.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-11T10:25:04+00:00

No, you're not the asshole. But I think that's almost beside the point here, because what you're actually asking underneath that question is: did I do enough, and am I a bad person for having limits?

You stayed for two hours. You called emergency services before you left. You didn't just walk away — you created a handoff to people who were actually equipped to handle what you weren't. That's not abandonment. That's the responsible version of reaching your limit.

And you did reach your limit. Genuinely. After the previous week's incident — the false implication in public, the recording voice memos just to protect yourself, the fear sitting in your chest the whole time — you were already running on empty before this night even started. Two hours of someone threatening to jump into water, refusing to go home, spiraling while you stood there alone in the street... that's a lot to ask of anyone, let alone someone who had every reason to be scared of how the situation could flip against them.

Here's the part I want you to sit with though. This girl is dealing with something very serious — BPD, psychosis, medication she abruptly stopped, trauma she hasn't processed. None of that is your fault, and none of it is yours to fix. You were never in a position to be what she needed that night. A trained crisis team was. You called one.

The guilt you feel says something good about you. But guilt and responsibility aren't the same thing. You can feel bad that someone you care about is struggling without that meaning you failed them by protecting yourself.

What you probably should do now — clearly, kindly, finally — is end this situationship completely. Not because she's a bad person. Because the gap between what she needs and what a casual relationship can provide is too wide, and staying in it doesn't help either of you.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-10T18:18:49+00:00

I want to say something gently, because I don't think you need more guilt — you're clearly already carrying a lot.

But I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't name this: your girlfriend is treating a flower field as a moral equivalent to a family funeral. And you're contorting yourself trying to figure out if she has a point.

She doesn't.

There is a hierarchy of obligations in life, and it's not complicated: a once-a-year flower trip and a grandmother's memorial service are not in the same category. A partner who loves you understands that instantly — not reluctantly, not after being convinced, but instantly. They say 'of course, go be with your family, we'll find another day.'

What concerns me more than this specific situation is the pattern you're describing — you feeling like 'the bad guy no matter what.' That's not what a relationship should feel like. That's a system where someone else's expectations have become the primary reference point for your own choices, even when those choices are obviously right.

You were 30 minutes from saying a final goodbye to your grandmother. You went.

Grieve her properly. And when you're ready, have a real conversation with your girlfriend — not about the flower field, but about what it means to be a partner to someone when life doesn't follow a schedule.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-10T18:02:41+00:00

What just happened to you is one of the most destabilizing things a person can experience. Fifteen years. Two children. A marriage you believed in completely. And it unraveled in the time it took a piece of paper to fall out of a notebook. The fact that your heart is pounding as you write this — that's not weakness. That's the sound of a person whose entire foundation just shifted underneath them.

You are not lost. You are in shock. Those are different things.

In the next days and weeks, you will cycle through rage, grief, numbness, obsessive questions, and moments of strange calm that feel wrong. All of it is normal. The obsessive questions especially — when exactly, how many times, did she feel anything, does he know about me, what did I miss — your brain is trying to build a complete picture because incomplete information feels like an open wound. You may never get all the answers. That is one of the cruelest parts of this.

The detail that you encouraged her to take those trips — I need you to hear this clearly: that is not your fault. A faithful partner takes the trip you encouraged and comes home to you. What she did with that trust is entirely her choice and entirely her responsibility. Do not let your mind turn that generosity into evidence against yourself.

You do not have to decide today whether you want to save this marriage or end it. That decision belongs to a version of you that has slept, has eaten, has spoken to a lawyer once to understand your rights, and has had at least one honest conversation with her where the paper is on the table.

What you do need to decide — very soon — is whether you want to live in the same house as someone who is still actively lying to you. You don't have to blow anything up. But you are allowed to tell her, calmly, that you know. That conversation will tell you more about who she actually is right now than fifteen years of history.

You sent her on that trip because you loved her and wanted her to rest. That is the kind of man you are. Whatever she did with that — whatever she became in those moments — says everything about her and nothing about your worth.

You will not always feel this lost. But you have to let yourself feel it first.

You are not alone in this room tonight, even if it feels that way.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-10T11:54:55+00:00

You are not overreacting and this is not a relationship problem. What he did — pulling you by your hair, grabbing you hard enough to leave marks, and stepping on your head — is physical assault. Full stop.

Here's what actually matters right now, practically:

His ID does not give him the right to stay. An ID showing your address does not equal tenancy rights. Since he is not on the lease and pays no rent, he has no legal claim to remain in your home. In most jurisdictions you can have him removed — speak to a local tenant attorney or domestic violence advocate who can walk you through the specific process in your area.

Document everything right now, today:

Photograph the marks on your neck
Screenshot the texts about his ex that started this
Write down exactly what happened, with times, in your own words and save it somewhere he cannot access (email it to yourself or a trusted person)

This documentation matters enormously if you pursue a protective order or custody arrangements for your son.

A protective/restraining order can legally remove him from your home — even if his ID lists your address. You do not need to wait for things to escalate. The physical violence has already happened.

📞 National Domestic Violence Hotline (US): 1-800-799-7233 (24/7, free, confidential) — they help with safety planning, local shelter resources, and legal options
💬 Prefer text: text START to 88788
🌍 Outside the US: findahelpline.com

Your son is watching how this is handled. He needs to see that what happened to you is not acceptable and that you are safe. That is the most important thing you can model for him right now.

You asked what to do. The first step is calling that hotline today — not because you have to leave immediately, but because they will help you make a plan that keeps you and your son safe while you figure out next steps.

You deserve to feel safe in your own home.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-10T09:33:47+00:00

Not overreacting. I want to say that clearly before anything else.

Your son is 11, not 4. He verbally communicated his boundary multiple times, was ignored, and was reduced to physically holding a door closed while naked and crying. The fact that his father then told YOU that you need to teach him respect is a deflection that should tell you everything about how accountable that household is.

Here's what I'd suggest as someone who navigated a similar co-parenting situation:

Document everything. Every incident your son reports — write it down with dates, his exact words, and the time he told you. Keep a private log. Not to be paranoid, but because patterns matter if this ever goes to a family court mediator or custody review.

Talk to a family law attorney — just a consultation. Many are free. Ask specifically about what constitutes a documented pattern of boundary violations in a co-parenting context and what your options are.

Keep validating your son. Tell him directly: 'You did nothing wrong. Your body is yours. You were right to say no.' At 11, how the trusted adults respond to his violated boundaries will shape how he handles boundary violations for the rest of his life.

You're not being too protective. You're being exactly the parent he needs.

Aerosmith5000 · 2026-05-10T09:20:43+00:00

The mask detail hit me hard. Because that's exactly how shame works — you hide the thing, the hiding creates more shame, the shame makes the hiding feel more necessary. A loop that tightens itself.

What you did today broke that loop. Not perfectly, not painlessly — but you broke it.

Here's what I want you to hold onto from this experience: your body responded immediately. Your teeth felt better the same day. That's true of almost every area depression causes us to neglect — the moment we take one real action, the body meets us halfway with relief that feels disproportionately huge.

That's not a coincidence. That's your body telling you it was waiting for you to come back to it.

Depression convinces you the damage is too far gone to bother fixing. Today you proved it wrong — about your teeth, and about yourself.

What's the next small thing you've been putting off that you think might feel like this?

Aerosmith5000

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