My heart is heavy today. I feel like tears could come at any moment. When I saw my counselor this week, I kept crying as we talked. My response of finding this new instance of infidelity has taken me by surprise. It’s a definite sign that I need to approach my healing in a different way. I have to go about this differently. I have to face my feelings.
Aversion to Feelings
As my friend told me very recently, I am not a fan of feelings. I love the happy, joyous and celebratory feelings. Who doesn’t? I, however, not only dislike the rough feelings, I have no idea how to deal with them…so I don’t. I just don’t.There’s no way to heal from anything if you don’t work through it. I’d like to say this is the first time I’ve “realized” my need to work through all the feelings and all that happened, but I’d be lying. This has crossed my mind more than a few times. I believe I have even written about it.
This is terribly difficult. When I’ve tried to do it before, I got to a point where I was overwhelmed, nightmares intensified and got more frequent and then I shut down. I am unable to function or think straight if I don’t shut down. So what can I do? There is so much to work through and I don’t know where to begin.
I guess I’ll start where I am.
This Is the Heartache
My husband’s many, many choices to be with other women has hurt me in so many ways. It brings thoughts and feelings such as – I wasn’t enough. Our vows meant nothing. He never really loved me. Why couldn’t he love me? I really am nothing. Why would he love me? I am unlovable and not worth anything. I am ugly..and so on.
These types of thoughts and beliefs have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember since some form of the comments have been repeatedly spoken into my life. However, after these discoveries, they were no longer something that I believed were probably true. Instead, I knew, without a doubt, that they were true. They became a part of me. I felt I had gone through a trial and been found guilty of all these accusations and more. I was clearly not worth being loved. How could he love me when I was not worthy of love.
There was a part of me that understood his choices, but, the truth is, there was no excusable reason for the choices he made. He made vows and chose to repeatedly break them. He didn’t think enough of me to honor those vows. I highly doubt he even thought about me at all, except for how to keep me from finding out, because taking responsibility for his actions was clearly not something he could do (it was one of the reasons he cited for his choice to commit suicide).
What Is the Truth?
Unfortunately, that truth, though, doesn’t take away the pain and the deep feelings of not being of value. I know I still hold deeply to the negative feelings as being true because of the sadness I feel as I type all of this out. I feel like, in all my human thinking, there is nothing worth fighting for where I am concerned.
What’s worse is when I thought others were probably seeing me the same way. When I discovered my husband’s affair four days before he died and the many others since he died, I felt that others were probably looking at me as not a very good person or wife. I mean, for my husband to have decided so often that there were others he would rather be with, how could I think otherwise? Please understand that no one ever said anything like this, but because I held the horrible beliefs about myself then it only made sense to me that others saw me this way as well.
Again, I didn’t have anyone telling me this, but I did have a couple of people who went out of their way to stress that they had a husband and they made it a show to hold tight to them when we were together. It wouldn’t have struck me as much if they had acted this way before my husband died and it didn’t shock me too much with who the two people were, but it was still painful and it added to my thoughts of people examining me and finding me wanting.
I’d love to say that has all changed now, but it hasn’t. I know I am loved by God and that I am His. That helps me so much (I’ll write more about that later), but the pain is deep. It’s taken me four days to actually write this post. The nightmares have been awful and, because of this, I wake up exhausted no matter how long I sleep and the dreams haunt me for hours and sometimes even all the next day. It’s a horrible way to live, but I am told that I will feel better and stronger the more I face my feelings and work through them. That remains to be seen but I feel so dark now.
My heart is broken.
Have you ever had something where you’ve refused to face your feelings about it and ended up hurting for so much longer than you should?
~ Joanna Lynn
Absolutely, during my second marriage! My husband did not leave the house but left emotionally, spiritually, financially, and physically. When I finally began to look at the facts without emotions all mixed up, I left him. The best thing I ever did.
Sorry you had to go through all of that. It was brace if you to leave and stand up for yourself.
Yes, but not easy!
Please, stop should-ing on yourself. It belongs in the rubbish bin along with phrases like “if only.” You feel what you feel. Processing painful emotions takes time. Mourning takes time. Letting go takes time. My sister struggles with horrible nightmares, too. I haven’t had one in a while. Yes, it’s painful but not as painful as allowing it to continue to fester and rule your life in ways that you don’t even realize… my emotions ran so many aspects of my life, and I didn’t even realize. I know you know this, but you are worthy. You are lovable. You are amazing. What others do and think are not anything you caused (unless you held a gun to their head, which I know you did not). They made choices, lousy choices, but they are not your fault. Keep fighting for you.
Thanks, Judy. That is what I’m trying to do. I push feelings away and I really need to learn to process them so they don’t fester (without me even knowing it most of the time). I’m glad your nightmares have stopped. I look forward to that happening.
<3