Well, of course she is
……I used to be a lot less cynical but now not so much.
Whatever she is telling you now, please prepare yourself that a)she will lie and b) the truth will be that it has gone on longer/more/further than she is saying now, a kind of trickle truth comes out with time usually and c) bc it’s a bit uncomfortable to admit that you have done something awful, bizarrely she may be nastier/angrier towards you bc that is how she justifies doing such a s&itty thing. Weird, I know, but common. So batten your metaphorical hatches
Anger tends to use and release a particular type of energy, doesn’t it?
I don’t know what your relationship with anger is like in your life before this. What you think about anger. Or the fact that anger is often pretty close to fear for most humans.
So, all this advice here is to break it down into separate bits at least for a while….
Your nervous system is probably telling you to move your body in some way. So, find a safe way to discharge the energy. Doesn’t matter what you do….I walked miles and miles ranting to the sky as I recall.
Do something that lets the frazzled energy of it out. You’ll know when you have done enough to discharge enough of it to feel that you are in control of it.
Honour your anger. It’s a reasonable and normal feeling to have. Don’t try to rationalise it away or feel you have to cover it with an empathy card at the moment. This person you loved and trusted has done something awful and profoundly disrespectful to you, perhaps some of the deepest parts of you, of what you value most. Anger is also often a flag for when we need a different boundary or a different mindset or expectation….it’s your self saying Hell No. and that’s normal and reasonable too. It’s ok to feel very angry with your wife, om, the universe, yourself even. And it’s ok to feel it without having to act on the feeling, or let it drive your reactions, or speak it out loud, so give it time. Breathe a bit. Like breathing through something physically painful, like one of those rugged cowboys in a movie having an arrow cut out….
Keep yourself and others safe from your anger. I’d avoid contact or conversations with your wife or others close to you until the fizz is spent. Drive with extra care. Stay off social media. Avoid big decisions, alcohol, drugs and appealing women.
When you have discharged the fizzy energy of it physically, and when you have given yourself a little time to breathe through it, you can let yourself listen to what it’s telling you. All those questions Marvin asked and more. That’s where you learn to befriend the anger almost, to accept it without being controlled by it, to consider what anger means to you bc in my experience it comes with some different baggage and different uses for different folks.
And do not be surprised if other emotions come along after the anger, sometimes big emotions. Sorrow, grief, spite, bitterness, fear, resentment, helplessness, exhaustion. Or indeed if the anger comes and goes and comes again.
Your job is to get as honest with yourself as you can be about feeling what you feel. But without letting it be in the driving seat. You can’t heal what you don’t let yourself feel. And you can’t control your responses if you deny the legitimacy and reality of how you feel. And you can’t be kind to yourself unless you accept that your anger is understandable and ok to feel, that it has the right to exist without thinking about your wife at all.
My suspicion is that some of your anger may be bc this new ‘information’ (no surprise based on stories here but still s&itty) has forced you to see things about your wife, your situation or yourself that you really don’t want to see. Bc once you see them, you can’t unsee them, can you? Most LBS live with a certain level of denial for a while…it’s a survival mechanism tbh, similar bit of our brain that still goes to call someone who has died or makes coffee for two, it kind of postpones certain things until we begin to be strong enough to begin to deal with it, I think….until we can’t deny something any longer and then we don’t. And that is a deeply painful thing to experience. Most of us here know that….most of us have felt something close to exactly how you feel right now. But here some of us are, on the other side of it, in our own way. And you will find your own way eventually to the other side too, my friend….but this is part of the path.
T: 18 M: 12 (at BD) No kids.
H diagnosed with severe depression Oct 15. BD May 16. OW since April 16, maybe earlier. Silent vanisher mostly.
Divorced April 18. XH married ow 6 weeks later.
"Option A is not available so I need to kick the s**t out of Option B" Sheryl Sandberg
Just Getting Started in this Journey 2
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