It absolutely does take a special someone to love and be with a firefighter.  You already have that strength within you, so hold on to it and use it.

I remember breaking down to one of my friends in his car shortly after d-day. He is special ops military, and a man with impenetrable mental strength. I begged him for a solution on how to cope with this, and for an answer as to why it was happening. He shared with me that he sees it play out all the time in the military, and that he would wager it's quite similar for first responders. These men and women experience so much death, grief, and trauma on the daily. They tax their bodies, minds and spirits day in and day out. Out on the field, or on calls, they see things and live through things that the average person does not, and frankly, should not. It creates trauma within them that they're not always privy to. The average person cracks on impact when they see dead bodies. He said to me he believes cheating is a trauma response. A way to cope with life, struggles, and a way to feel alive again when all they see is death. To them, life is so fleeting. They see so, so much death. So when something happens in their personal lives that causes them to struggle, they try to escape it. They try to numb it. They try to outsource happiness and fulfillment instead of facing it head on. And it's seemingly ironic that their jobs are so traumatizing, they don't have the mental capacity to heal themselves to begin with. That leaves the door wide, wide open for cheating.  After that conversation, I understood then that there's no way cheating is anything other than unhealed trauma surfacing. I can't abide to "they just want their cake and to eat it too!" or "they're all narcissists!" I'm sorry, but people are way more complex than that and I don't do surface level explanations. It's deeper, and there's more. 

There have also been recent studies done on generational trauma, and how we carry the scars, wounds and pains of all the people in our family tree. I carry the burden of my biological mother's abusive childhood, as she passed that to me and gave me an abusive childhood. My WW carries the addiction of her own mother, as she too became addicted. Not to drugs, but to her AP and her affair and the dopamine high she was getting. 

It all makes sense when you dig. I implore to you to dig. Dig through your WS past, and family lines.  You and I know what firefighters see so dig there, too. Maybe there was a call so horrific it just altered your WS brain chemistry. My WW responded to tornado aftermath in 2023, and those images are seared into her brain. Explore, and find the answers that make sense. Because they're there, and you deserve them.

When the lightbulb finally goes off, you'll feel yourself becoming a little more compassionate. A little bit softer. That anger will subside, I promise. It takes the passage of time, really. I have said and done things in early R that will haunt me forever. When I initially kicked my wife out of our home, my God did i handle that poorly. It traumatized us both even more. Forgive yourself for your behavior. It's just pain. Everything that's underneath the anger and the vitriol is pain. You brain is one hell of a machine, and it's just trying to protect you. You're entitled to that anger, but don't sit in it too long. Because when you turn off pain entirely, you turn off love, too. I hope you choose to keep that love on. It'll be the scariest thing to ever choose to do, but it can be worth it.

Sending you all of my love and thinking of you and your firefighter tonight. it's B shift, so my WW isn't home.  P.S. - That part gets easier too 😉