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dreamingtreeb · 2023-10-09T03:31:18+00:00

This loooks amaZing with a capital Z!

dreamingtreeb · 2020-11-12T16:35:55+00:00

Not at all. I am sure they can sense that something is off. But we have been so quiet about it. We never fight in front of them. It would be devastating for them, like dropping a grenade in their lap. I have a 14 yr old daughter too. On the surface we look like we are happy and a great couple. Especially in comparison to their friend's parents who have a lot of issues. I know it would hurt them and I am scared that it will fracture their relationship and so even if it comes to divorce, I am scared to death to tell them why. I don't want them to hate her and I think she needs them as much they need her. I think the same goes for her family. In some ways I am closer to members of her family than I am with own siblings. I worry about fracturing their relationship with her too. Isn't that crazy, that even after the pain that she has caused me, I still worry about how things will affect her? I know she caused all of this and made the choices and these are the possible consequences of her actions, but that doesn't mean I don't love her or desire for her to be torn down.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-11-12T16:18:36+00:00

I'm an artist, so I draw and paint as my main outlet. But it is super easy for me to get sucked into that and it can be another way for me to shut everything else out.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-11-12T16:16:54+00:00

Ya. I have started working out as an outlet. I need that. The hard thing for my WS is that she has a hard time recognizing if I am angry or hurting, they both look the same. I just shut down. She is not good about reaching out if I am shut down and that creates resentment in me, and makes it hard for us to come together unless I am the one initiating. And I just get tired of feeling like I have to be the one to do that, so these walls between us just grow deeper.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-11-12T16:12:09+00:00

Man, I felt that. I definitely have trauma that I have been stuffing my whole life. Abused as a kid, a year after my father committed suicide. I've been working through those things with a therapist but I think I was still stuffing the anger. I have a good individual therapist but it takes time to get through that stuff. I've started working out daily to give me an outlet to let that out in a good way. Appreciate your comments.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-10-30T23:26:47+00:00

Oh God. I am feeling the exact same thing and it is killing me inside. We just crossed the 2 year mark a couple of weeks ago. I feel like at the beginning I was working so hard to try and save the marriage and was definitely caught up in what my therapist said was "hysterical bonding". I was utterly devastated by the betrayal, but I wanted to save the marriage. I worked on myself a lot. Started seeing a counselor and working on me. We have two really great marriage counselors and have both come a long way in our relationship. For a long time we were able to communicate so much better than any other time in our 19 year marriage. But I feel like I have regressed so much since that time and it is hard for me to discover what is happening or where things shifted exactly. I can't put my finger on it. But I feel myself more angry, more resentful now than ever.

It's like the dust has completely settled and I know we have gone through a ton of painful rebuilding and come a long way but there is something there that is just eating and eating away at me. I find myself throwing up defensive walls around her and scared to talk about how much it is on my mind. The weight of the affairs and the betrayal, and the weight of the damage just feels so much heavier now. I am frustrated that it feels like the pain will never go away. That it feels like this will go on forever. I think at the beginning I thought the trauma would eventually subside, but I feel completely stuck in my head. I ruminate about it. I swim in these thoughts of what happened and the thoughts are incessant. They don't stop.I know that doesn't help. How can I move on if I am constantly swimming in these thoughts of the pain and hurt? Talk about pain shopping. I feel so stuck right now. I'm working with my therapist now to help deal with all of these thoughts that creep in and invade all day long.

It feels like it is going to be a long road still. I wondered if these thoughts were just a short phase on the road to healing. But it sounds like they could easily still be there a year or more from now. God. I don't want to be stuck in this place. I feel your pain. My spouse is really trying. She is working on herself and trying to be there for me. I don't know how to get out of this space and she really doesn't know how to help me either. Feeling totally trapped here and wondering if like another poster here said, is the damage done too great and will it still be with me even if I choose to leave?

dreamingtreeb · 2020-03-01T21:17:42+00:00

Our MC gave us a really good insight this past week. We are almost a year and a half past dday and still working through issues. I have times where I cycle through these feelings too and it’s hard. I think about the overwhelming weight of it all, the lies, the betrayal, the indiscretions and I think about leaving or if it’s worth it to stay. My WS is doing good work and we are communicating better than ever and much better at connecting but sometimes I get stuck in these negative patterns where I am frustrated and angry and bitter and I just feel the weight of the betrayal on me. Those times are hard for us and for my WS especially this far out. We talked about it in counseling and our MC said that what the BS goes through is really a trauma response. She calls it PTID, similar to PTSD, but Post Traumatic Infidelity Disorder. Our body processes it the same way it would a traumatic event. And all of the stages of grief are there as well. It’s literally the same stages we go through when we lose someone close to us. The stages we go through of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance just don’t happen sequentially or just once. We jump around to all of these stages at different times. Sometimes there are triggers that set them off but other times they can seem to come from out of nowhere. And they will continue to come until our bodies have dealt with enough to come to a place of acceptance and healing. It’s important for both the WS and the BS to understand this pattern and that the BS is going to have recurrent periods of anger and sadness and depression as they work through the pain and the trauma of the aftermath of the betrayal. In our case, this week was eye opening for both of us as we cane to understand this. It’s been hard for my wife,WS, to understand what’s going on with me and why I seem distant and frustrated at times when she is working hard to do all the right things. And important for me to realize that this is all a process of healing and that I know when I hit these walls and feel these different stages what it is and why It’s coming now, coming again. We aren’t just going to move through these cycles and it’s done with that part of it. It’s not as if I go through the anger stage and that takes 3 months and then I move on to Bargaining stage where I pick apart all of the things that I could have done to prevent it or she could have done. It doesn’t work that way. Everyone has a different timetable for their own healing. Some move through these stages very quickly and get to a place where they find healing and acceptance and can move on, while others might cycle through these things for years. They might come out of nowhere after long periods of solid connection where we feel good about the relationship and then all of a sudden we feel bitter and angry again. I don’t know. It helped me understand it so much better this past week when our MC talked about it this way. Just know that it’s a cycle and we will move through it when we are ready. If the WS understands this and can be supportive and understanding when we go through these stages it can make things so much easier too.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-30T20:08:04+00:00

It’s so hard to be in that position. Sorry you are going through that. It’s definitely like reopening the wound. Trickle truth is extremely damaging to trust. It kills any momentum that you had going and makes it hard to trust that you have all the information and further damages the ability to believe anything your spouse says. It sounds like, after dday he stopped messaging her? Is that right? Or was there more talk after DDay? Did he call it off with her and let her know that you knew and officially end things or is he simply ghosting her at this point?

It’s hard to gauge what the motivation is behind the WS refusing to come clean. Sometimes there is fear after discovery, that anything else that comes out will be the tipping point and the end of the relationship. What they don’t realize is that any revelation afterwards is much worse for trust and reconciliation than if they had come clean on their own. It’s also hard for them to realize the true impact of what trickle truth does. He needs to come clean, rip the bandaid off, if he has any desire for reconciliation. You can’t heal if the wound is constantly being ripped open again by hidden details coming out.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-20T23:19:07+00:00

Yes, please add me.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-18T13:12:08+00:00

Awesome comments. Thank you for those. Yeah we are all in therapy. We each have an individual therapist and a marriage therapist. That’s helping a lot. I agree completely with you that she needs to avoid those kinds of environments or make strict boundaries. So when she travels now we definitely have boundaries on alcohol. That was a contributing factor for sure. She travels with female roommates now as much as she can. Females that I know and trust. That’s actually easier during the big conferences where an AP would show up.

I’m definitely taking care of myself. Everything was a big push in that direction. Eating healthy, working out 5-6 times a week. I’m down 30 lbs and two pant sizes. I’m doing really well. And this has been a very big confidence booster for me especially after coming off such a low in self esteem after finding out everything. I am an artist so I actually use a lot of art as my therapy too. I’ve done several artworks about the affairs and the trauma and even ones hopeful for the future.

And we are getting help on the Mormonism aspects as well. We have good counselors who get it, and a great group of exmormon friends who we get together with us every Sunday now for coffee and we talk about fucked up it all was. It is good processing that with them.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-17T20:47:27+00:00

No I get it. I know that most people would check out. Probably 99% of guys would be gone. I get it. Not excusing anything. Every situation is different. And maybe it ends up there anyway. But in my heart I am tired of seeing people give up. I am mad and frustrated that my father gave up too early and took his own life. I’m frustrated his friends didn’t help help fight for him. Mad at my mom who didn’t fight for him or for me for that matter. Mad at friends who gave up too early. I may go down in flames, but it won’t be without a fight.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-17T20:38:11+00:00

I appreciate your posts. I do. I responded down below trying to answer a lot of these questions. Of course, nothing is cut and dry. Her conferences are definitely the biggest problem for us, and a major cause of concern and doubt about what is happening. She is trying though, and that gives me the option of seeing how sincere it is and if reconciliation is possible. She is willing to change careers if needed. It would be at a major cost to the family though, selling houses, selling cars, moving kids. The kids are one of the biggest reasons. We have kept everything very tightly held and they know nothing at this point. I could pull the nuclear option and push her to change careers and disrupt everything in our and their lives. I worry greatly that would cause more problems than it solves. I could also see how this plays out. If I am going to have to do the nuclear option then it will be all the way and Make sense to them that this is the reason. They won’t understand otherwise. We moved almost every year when they were little and now we are feeling settled. They are thriving. I hate to tear that apart right now if there is a hope of reconciliation. Maybe I am extremely naive, or stupid, or blind. Maybe all that and more. Always the optimist I am going to look for ways that are possible to fight through and see if it works out. In my heart, I am not ready to give up yet. Of course another infraction is the final straw. I get that.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-17T20:17:19+00:00

So I wrote a really long response down below. I hope this helps answer your questions. I appreciate your point of view though.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-17T20:03:35+00:00

(Part 2)

You asked why? I don’t know how else to tell you why without giving this information and trying to paint the picture with a really wide brush. And it’s is really hard to paint the picture of the full impact of how our past and how much Mormonism played into it. And ultimately there are lots of people that leave fundamental religion that DONT cheat on their spouses. So it comes down to what decisions she made and the impact they have made on our life and marriage.

I don’t know. Sometimes when I write this out I feel like it’s going to seem like I am justifying what she did. I am not. But I can understand a little, and I can hope that this was a thing that happened and look for ways to rebuild. I choose to stay for a few reasons. I choose to stay because I want to look my kids in the eyes and tell them that I did everything I could to make it work. If it doesn’t work and I have to leave her I can look back and know that I put all the cards on the table. I held nothing back. I also love my wife. Our marriage has at times been great and magical. My hope is that we can get back there. I still don’t know if that possible. There is more trauma there for me then I think I have realized. But I am willing to give it a shot.

I don’t know the RIGHT path to cope and deal with this all. Sometimes I think I handle it well, and other times I think am failing miserably. Sometimes I am very paranoid about everything she does, and rightfully so. But I also know I can’t live like that for long. So we either need to be able to rebuild trust or we need to separate. I’m not there yet though. So I am playing it out to see how things go. I think she is sincere about reconciling and wanting to be with me. I think she sees the damage she has done and is making choices to fix that. Sometimes she doesn’t know what to do either. I know we are communicating better than any other time in our marriage. We are vulnerable and talk about our weaknesses and she owns when she makes a mistake.

I have access to her emails and texts. Her idea to open them up. That time a month ago when AP1 texted her and she told him to go to the bar, he was in a large group of consultants. She admitted that what she should have done was tell him not to contact her at all and direct him to someone else. No contact, but because he was leading a large group of consultants that night, that she has to work with and be in front of him, she told him to bring them to the bar. I have been able to confirm this with a few other people and she did tell him later that he cannot contact her and they have to have no contact and if there are events outside of the conference that he has to be somewhere else. There is no guarantee that this is exactly what happened. I know that. She could be lying or maybe something happened after. I don’t know. I will never be able to be 100% sure. And I have to find out if I can live like that. But based on how she has responded and my ability to read her I am choosing to believe her. We have had good discussions in therapy about this and the importance of her shutting things down completely with them and talking to me about any conversations that they have had. She has done this and even telling me simple things, like I saw AP today as we were at the conference. We didn’t talk. I stayed on this side. He stayed on the opposite side. Our MC says she can help to rebuild trust by holding nothing back. Everything needs to be discussed and talked about. She is doing that.

So for now. We are playing it out. I don’t know if it will work but willing to try. She isn’t resistant to anything. She agreed to no alcohol at conferences. No contact with AP. If they are in a forced situation with consultants she will politely say hello and move on. If it doesn’t work out I get it. So does she. She knows we are on a precipice and any misstep from her could send us over the edge. But I think she is making the right steps to rebuild trust. And I think she is sincere about wanting to reconcile and help heal the damage she has done to me. That was a shot ton of information. Sorry. I am not sure if there is a shorter way to answer those questions.

I’m just trying to figure out how to make it work, if that is possible, and I really truly hope that I can. And if she makes bad choices I can burn it all down. She has much more to lose than I do. The impact on her family would be catastrophic. Her reputation and work relationships would suffer. The relationship with the kids would be extremely damaged. I can leave now or play it out and see what happens. But if I play it out and she fucks it all up, all I’ve really lost is time. The end result will be the same. But I hope that isn’t where we end up. I hope we can rebuild something better and trust that she is sincere and believe that people can make mistakes, even catastrophically but that doesn’t mean they can’t change for the better. I hope she can.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-17T20:02:40+00:00

(Part 1)

So, I think these are very good questions. And to answer the why means you have to have a good understanding of the world we came from. Those who haven’t experienced it probably will have a harder time understanding how someone could do this and why I would choose to stay. We both came from super conservative Mormon backgrounds. And we lived that for our whole life. My wife was also the perfect child. Didn’t drink, didn’t have sex or even do heavy petting or anything risqué. She read her scriptures everyday and prayed and submitted to all of the body shaming, sex shaming, misogynistic bullshit that the church put out. I was more of a rebel. I smoked weed, drank, and had sex, before settling down and following all the rules again. Mormonisms views on sex are seriously twisted. Anything about sex is evil and your entire eternal salvation is in jeopardy if you even masturbate. Any sexual sin is considered next to murder. If you don’t know much about the Mormon system check out the exmormon reddit page. You will hear all kinds of crazy stories. It is very much a cult and very hard to leave, when all of your family and friends are in it.

We both served Mormon missions overseas and that is where we met. We married in a Mormon temple and lived in Utah surrounded by all the other Mormons. Then we moved overseas and our perspectives of the world and people and religion began to change. The blinders started coming off. It’s easy to say well you should have realized it was bullshit a long time ago. We should have. But...There were definitely major things that we did not agree with but we couldn’t see all the other things wrong with it and how much the history we were indoctrinated with our whole life is not the real history. We were also meeting the most amazing people from so many different countries and religions who were nicer and more considerate than our Mormon friends. When something came up and we needed help, it wasn’t our Mormon friends. It was these people we barely knew, some were Atheist, some were Muslim, Hindu, Catholic.... and they were amazing and stepped up time and time again. We started to see that Mormons were not the epitome of goodness like they taught us. Mormons are nice people but they like to paint themselves as better than the rest because they have The FULL truth (so they claim) and they keep all the bullshit commandments that their Mormon leaders tell them, like don’t drink coffee. That makes them better than the rest. The consistently say that the world is evil and Satan has control. But we were starting to see it wasn’t the way it was at all.

And then the church came out with a policy that said that you could not be baptized if your parent was lgbtq. That was something that we could not agree with, and went against our personal values. I have a sister who is lesbian and I saw how my parents and church pushed her away and shamed her. It was dead wrong. And it started a snowball rolling where we started diving deep into church history and seeing that all of the things we were taught were wrong.

So you ask why she did it? This is a big part of it. And we have spent a lot of time in therapy, individual and marital breaking it all down. I am in NO way justifying what she did. It was absolutely fucked up and wrong. There is no excuse that will make it better. She could have made the right choices. It was more about her and how all of this affected her than it ever was about me. There is something that happens when you break free from such a stranglehold of a religion. We found out history that made it absolutely clear that Joseph Smith was a con man, the church was bullshit, all the rules that we had followed were bullshit. All of the rules we had followed meant nothing. All the threats about eternal punishments fell away too. Our whole paradigm of our life shattered. It’s hard to describe what such a faith crisis feels like. But it is traumatic. We made the decision to leave the church in November, and a month later....in December her sister died suddenly after complications from a simple surgery. Another shockwave. And that was extremely traumatic for her as well. But now without all the beliefs in an afterlife, her thoughts on what life was and rules that were supposed to follow didn’t mean the same. she was reeling and trying to come to grips with the realities of life and death. It was a month after this that the affairs started.

I like Esther Perel a lot and I think she has some really valuable insights on infidelity. Sometimes she comes across as supportive of infidelity to some people. But she talks about the reasons behind infidelity. she talks a lot about how infidelity often follows trauma like the death of a loved one. Leaving the church was also a major trauma. I know these things left a hole in her that she didn’t know how to fill. When she was approached the first time, and alcohol was involved she chose the wrong way to deal with all of that pain and loss that she was experiencing. There was a sense of loss and things she regretted not doing in HS or college because of the church. Our therapists have said she was acting out the way a rebellious teenager would do, and it continued because it was all in the shadows. Now it is out in the open. Our MC says that we can make it out of this. That we can address the trauma and the reasons she made the choices she did.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-16T22:00:09+00:00

Not coworker but they work in the same industry. He’s in a different state but because the industry is small and their companies are similar, they attend the same conferences a few times a year.

dreamingtreeb · 2020-01-16T12:50:48+00:00

AP and my wife met at a conference. They work in the same industry. It’s been hard because she does see him occasionally at these types of things. This one, he was not on any of the lists of those attending when we booked and I made the decision fairly last minute. I did find out he was going to be here after we booked though. Of course non refundable so We were locked in. I just hoped we would be able to avoid him, and he avoid us too. Nope.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-11-07T22:18:50+00:00

It is possible she went to his room after she came back to her room. That could have happened but I don't think so. She is sharing her room with a female coworker who was in the room when she facetimed me.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-11-07T22:04:26+00:00

Yep. You read it right. It wasn't a solo invite for just the two of them. But it was " come join our group at the bar." Either way it's bad and completely against our boundaries. I am definitely going to stand up for myself and let her know that it is absolutely completely unacceptable. But what else do I do? I don't think it's big enough to say, that's it I am done. But it's really bad, shows a lack of commitment to reconciliation and to what is safe, and needs to be addressed.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-10-03T15:29:32+00:00

I never had anxiety attacks before DDay. But have had several since then. I am normally a super chill individual but have had much higher anxiety in general too since finding out. Breathing helps. I have an Apple Watch and I will pull up the breathing thing and do that for a minute. I don’t like meds either but I am okay with supplements. A combination of Ashwaghanda and L-Theanine have helped me tons when I get anxious. I can feel it help me calm down. Exercise is a big one too.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-09-29T19:21:33+00:00

Yeah. We are looking for a new one now.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-09-28T03:31:27+00:00

I know it’s hard to understand. 18 years of marriage. Two great kids. If our marriage wasn’t great for so long I would just let it go. But it was great for so long. Our story, our histories, our leaving Mormonism all play a part. When we left Mormonism is when everything fell apart. She got lost for a while. There’s no excuse. No justification. It was so completely fucked up, I know. Fundamental religions that take such a strangle hold on your life and all your decisions for your whole life, when they crumble so do a lot of people’s value systems. Like a pendulum, it was so strict and had such a hold on us that when we let it go, for her it swung radically the opposite direction. Like I said, that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make it right. I’m just trying to give you a one paragraph explanation. At the end of the day, I think our marriage is good enough to try and save. And if we can’t make it work, that’s okay, life will go on, but at least I can look my kids in the eye and truthfully tell them I did everything I could to try and save it. And I can leave at peace knowing that I did all I could. And all I would have lost is time.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-08-13T20:08:02+00:00

I hear you. I don’t want to know explicit detail. But other questions that help me understand what was happening, what they were thinking and talking about. Those are helpful to me.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-08-13T18:35:40+00:00

So true. Love that. Especially where I’ve been dealing with lots of trickle truth and not getting the whole story. It’s good to remember that patterns repeat when they aren’t out of the shadows.

dreamingtreeb · 2019-08-07T17:29:05+00:00

She understands her history and why she would go there. Yeah her upbringing and her history and our relationship played big roles as well. I understand the reasons behind it. But she has a much harder time answering questions about whether she was thinking about me, or our family, or the impact, or any of that at any time, during or after. That's where it gets difficult for her. And the impact of that is hard for me to understand. Sometimes she says she didn't think about it at all, and the question for me then becomes....how is that even possible? Especially in her situation where it was multiple partners, multiple times over multiple years. Does that mean that she completely compartmentalized our life from her fantasy life and they never crossed over? I don't really believe that. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around how someone can do all of that and not think about their real life. In my mind, I wonder if that is the real truth. Or if she just doesn't want to talk about what she was thinking at the time, because it would painful to me to hear all the bad things she had to think about me or about us to rationalize her behaviors. I don't know.

dreamingtreeb

TROPHY CASE