SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello everyone, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve been here. I’m four months out from Dday and my WW and I have been working on ourselves and attempting to lay the groundwork for attempting reconciliation.

For the most part, I do alright. Thoughts/memories of the affair still suck, but they don’t hit with the intensity they once did. However, today I have found myself unexpectedly hit with sadness. Like serious sadness.

The timing is terrible as I have things at my job I simply cannot put off and it’s going to be a long couple days to close out the week.

How do you handle the worst days when sulking simply isn’t an option? I don’t necessarily want to completely ignore the feelings. I just can’t do it right now

I found out about my husband’s affair at a time when some of life’s circumstances were so demanding that I didn’t have the luxury of honoring and sitting with my feelings. (We were caring for a close relative who was dying, moving an elderly family member in with us, and keeping jobs and kids afloat at the height of Covid). On days like you describe, I did my best to shut it all out and do what needed to be done, and I managed it partly by promising myself one time per day to let my feelings take over: when I went to take a shower at night. I spent an extra long amount of time in the bathroom either quietly sobbing or just laying at the floor and staring at the wall in overwhelming sadness/despair/rage. Then I’d take my shower, pull myself together, and go back out to face the world and my kids and my responsibilities.

I don’t necessarily recommend this strategy if you can avoid it at all, and the complex trauma of that time period extended my healing arc, but if you have to function semi-normally, it’s one way to do it.

I’m very sorry. Infidelity recovery is brutally hard.

For me, I was lucky enough to be working from home and had a flexible work schedule. Sometimes, I'd sit at my computer and be working with tears flowing. My concentration was shot, too. I would often take a 10 minute break to pull myself together. I worked longer hours to make sure my work got completed.

Later, I started learning meditation. (New employee benefit of Headspace provided by my employer.) I found that the meditation exercises helped me to refocus myself and would be able to concentrate...plus, it helped my when my thoughts would spiral out of control.

I’m terrible at compartmentalizing so I struggled at work. I ended up actually losing my job so do better than I did. but I would use a meditation app as well. I use the one called calm and I would sometimes just go out in my car for 10 minutes and play one of the meditations and get myself into a better headspace and then go back into work. And I would take walks around the building if I needed to just to let some of that nervous energy out.

And you could tell yourself that when the week is over, you’ll have a chance to feel all the feels.

So sorry that you’re going through all this.

How do you handle the worst days when sulking simply isn’t an option?

I push through and do it [whatever it is] anyway. And it hardAF.

However, I do schedule myself some time afterward to indulge a bit. Long walks, buy something new for myself, get my nails/hair done (you can figure out whatever the male equivalent of that is).

IF something is really bothering me during those days, I jot them down. I keep a spreadsheet of them. That does a few things. #1 is gets them out of the front of my brain - this is important. Because after I write it down, I don't have to try to remember it - I can tell myself that I can let it go, because I documented it. Then, when I have the time or inclination, I can revisit and see if it is something I need to address or I can let go. Sometimes, this allows me to find patterns for triggers and such. Sometimes, it just allows me to know my feeling is valid, documented and there for future reference. BUT this practice allows me to keep on keeping on without the Lizard Brain trying to take over.