Internal Backlash
What the thread title says. I'm on the betrayed side, roughly seven months in. I'm chiller. I recently had this gift of a moment when I was able to stop being surprised by triggers. I expect them now, not in a hypervigilant way, but in a way that means when one happens, I can more easily meet it as natural and understandable and not something that has to push me down into despair.
I've been practicing forgiveness when triggers happen. (I'm nowhere near actually having forgiven btw. I started with "exploring the willingness to forgive" and recently graduated all the way to "willing to consider forgiving." No step is too tiny, I'm finding.) This has been doing three things for me: pulling me into the present, centering my agency, and doing both of those things while directly addressing the wounding so my brain doesn't get a whiff of avoidance. My days are full of effort. But still, three months ago, writing the last two paragraphs would have been inconceivable to me.
Then I had my first good day. We did. Together. The best I've been able to hope for in seven-ish months has been a day that's not bad, but this day was really and truly good.
So naturally, I had a nightmare that night. The upshot was, my brain wants me to know I will never escape this albatross, and I'm lying to myself if I manage to not think about it and feel happy for even a few hours. She's fun.
Depression peeks its head around the corner after that, and I got a massive trigger the next day. Too big for being willing to consider forgiveness to derail. Since then, the betrayal is loud in here. I know there are setbacks. I know progress isn't linear. But I'm watching my brain light up all the neon signs it has to let me know that it isn't safe to walk this path I managed to get a single foot on.
If someone came to me with this, I'd tell them it makes sense. To slow down for a minute and let it wash through. But I feel so low.
I don't know what to ask. I don't feel smart or insightful or hopeful or curious. I'm an easily discouraged person. This whole thing has been a nightmare. I'm primed to dissect downsides and risk as a fundamental part of my personality. But even I know I need to find a way to move toward something good, not just away from something bad. I'm discouraged that a single day of me doing that successfully has been met with a days-long crash and my head being back on a swivel. I guess I feel like I'm just not brave enough for this. Or my disposition is too gloomy for me to figure out how to find any lightness.
I'm sorry this is so long. I'm too tired to edit it down. Thank you for being an open forum here.
7 comments posted: Thursday, November 12th, 2026
A Few of My Stages
So, I've been doing this alone. I'm a BP in the first months after discovery, and I guess I need an outlet that involves real, live people. Or the possibility of them. He wants to reconcile, and I want to feel like what I want matters to him.
Why I'm here: we're working through "Getting Past the Affair." I've had a lot of thoughts and feelings outside of our guided work. When I had repeated all of my agony to him twice, I bought a journal. But this thing that has damaged a big part of my sense of how I connect with people isn't finding paper very satisfying. I'm going to try this, and if any of you read it, you'll have my gratitude.
I'm particularly grateful to the long-haul FWSs here, whose full-throated candor and humility and persistence have provided me with some oxygen I didn't know I could get while my WP has hurtful human responses I haven't had to witness from you all. Your generosity here has given me more room to breathe than any other resource I've found. Grateful to any of you who continue to share, from every perspective. Thank you all.
As for me. Four months after discovery, I've understood every single one of my emotions and trains of thought throughout this process. Even the wild and unflattering ones. I've watched the storms and known what each one was responding to and/or trying to accomplish. I know my brain. I can't always predict the choices it will make, but I can witness and understand those choices and learn from them.
But acceptance. Acceptance is too quiet. I'm big on exercising the nonzero control we have over our lives, but I've run out of road on that at the moment. I'm not exactly numb. Not exactly peaceful. But strangely calm. Free of adrenaline, at last (for the moment, at least). Disappointed. Profoundly disappointed.
I spent a little over three months in some denial and heaps of bargaining. I dipped my toe into acceptance, or at least glanced its way, but the truth that he chose not to love me so that someone else could love him sent me into depression. Then my anxiety would kindly, stupidly swoop in to suggest some more bargaining to rescue me from the depression. It was never wrong, really. It was—is—always a good idea to work on myself more. But I'm finally not depressed. Not shattered. Bewildered by the scope, for sure.
In the bargaining, I paid lip service to the notion that we might not make it, that the jury of my heart was still way out. Emotionally and behaviorally, however, I was furiously super-gluing shards back together. I was denying that the relationship was over, ended without my input at all. I'm not now. I'm living with an ex-partner who left me months ago, and now regrets the decision. Since he never moved out, he'd like to see if I'm game to try again. More bargaining.
If he had been open about leaving me, I'd have a whole new and different life now. I wouldn't be considering a new life with him. I don't like that the lies accomplished something. I want them to have been as wholly destructive for him as they have been for me. My sense of justice is offended that I'm considering a new relationship with him, for no other reason than he gleefully cast off his integrity and was wholly uninterested in finding an ounce of respect for me. It's only because I was blindsided that I'm open to it. He gets to take advantage of my brain's knee-jerk aversion to losing something it somehow believes it had, even though it definitely didn't.
He took advantage of many things. He exercised his capacity for selfishness and cruelty. He is not particularly selfish and cruel. Nevertheless, his opportunistic and callous risk assessment worked like a charm. It's my wounded risk assessment that someone should counsel me against. When I needed him to be selfless for our relationship, he peaced out. But now he's asking me to be selfless for the relationship, and there's no making that add up. But life isn't an equation, relationships require compromise, and we all get to make whatever decisions we make. Life is full of bargains. He still looks and smells and feels like my person. I can't always predict the choices he'll make, but I can try to witness and understand those choices and learn from them.
For now, I have to tell myself that all options are on the table. Because I will revert to panic when confronted with the reality of being in relationship with a person who spontaneously left the relationship in the most hurtful way possible. So I cradle my nervous system and tell it we don't have to know right now. That we probably won't ever know, ever again. That the old way of being in relationship, the way where you get to "know" doesn't exist anymore. Never really existed. Not because he betrayed me, but because that's a lazy and naive way for me to bring myself to relationship. Always was.
Now, reconciling means that I commit to being uncertain with the same person until one of us stops committing again. Acceptance isn't something that happens once. It's the habit of re-grounding my mind to reality. Over and over. Forever. I suspect the trick is this: that commitment gets easier if he'll do the same for me one day. I'm skeptical. I'm terrified. Yet I do hope that's an experience future me might get to have.
Thanks again, all.
6 comments posted: Monday, July 27th, 2026
