Hello all. I am starting this thread in the interest of getting some help for my WW and myself. She has never posted or read on this forum, but I am considering inviting her to read and post in this specific thread if she is interested.

She has setup the 'no contact' with the OM, and it has been about a week and a half now. She is hurting very badly sometimes. I assume it is withdrawal that she is feeling. I try to comfort her, and do whatever I can to help her when she is down. I feel horrible when I see her so low. She says she understands why the NC is necessary for us to recover, but the pain is still there to be dealt with.

Our marriage was bad before. I was the one who would hide from her, and she was the one that would always try to reach me. I would just push her farther away. I totally accept blame for not meeting her emotional needs back then. I've been trying to meet her needs since d-day (april 15), and she says I am almost like a different person.

Recently, when we have good moments together, or she feels close to me, she says her mind hits her with a painful thought or memory. This is usually a memory of a bad event from the past that we experienced (a fight, misunderstanding, etc). These 'flashbacks' hurt her and make her feel horrible, often ruining the good moment we are in. Has anyone experienced this before?

Although she and I have hurt each other, we both love our family (1 3yr old son) very much. Any advice or comments for either myself of my wife would be helpful.

Thanks all.

Sundog - I hope she will post. The FWW's here are wonderful. They are always willing to help. I think it would be great if your wife wanted to post.

Hi Sundog - yes - invite your wife - many of us FWW's can help her -she will feel safe and understood and learn more of what she needs to do to recover and to help the marriage.

There are lots of good posts on here - click on the one found in my signature to start - it's specifically written for your women like your wife.

There is also one by suzet for withdrawel that can be found in the thread my signature links to.

Keep comforting her during this time of withdrawel...let her know you care about her feelings and help her to feel safe to continue to be open and honest with you. Her pain of losing Om will pass, and it will be replaced with the pain of knowing what she has done to you. This pain is even worse and can be overbearing - it's hard to look yourself in the mirror when guilt and remorse hits. Through MB books and this site she can learn how to communicate with you , and many FWW's on here including myself can help her learn to forgive herself over time.

As for you, when your pain hits, let her comfort you - as a FWW, it's so tough when the one you love hurts and you know it's because of you and you can't do anything about it...let her do something to help you with your pain. It will help you know she cares, and help her feel she is doing something to help with the pain she caused. Try not to LB during this time, as it makes things worse for both of you and start trying to lay down the new foundation for the marriage you two are going to have.

I am glad she has started NC sundog, and hopefully you can get her to these boards. Being a WS is a very lonely place to be once you have come out of the fog...and it's nice to have people who can relate to you.

Well, she was willing to read the post and the replies (thanks believer and Dorry!), but I don't think she's to the point of contributing anything yet. She read quietly and had watery eyes after reading Dorry's comments.

She just doesn't feel like she has the strength to work on this right now. She feels drained from all the drama, in addition, our son is on a major organ transplant list, so the stress levels were already high enough.

Today we had somewhat of a breakdown. She hadn't slept much and she had a headache, and I should've known better than to talk about us when she was feeling this way. Her moods very much affect how she sees everything. These are some of the things she said:

- She feels like she is ending up being the bad guy, even though I was the one who wasn't there for her all those years. Now that she had the A, she feels like that's all people are looking at, she'll always be the bad guy.

- She feels like she has lost a major person in her life (withdrawal). She feels horrible.

- She feels very controlled. Her parent, my parents, and myself are encouraging her to work things out. She also knows that I've done some things to detect C and she feels paranoid all the time (although I don't understand being paranoid if there is nothing going on).

- She says we shouldn't have gotten married. She feels she should have seen the signs that we would have had marital problems. This one hurts a lot to hear. I understand her saying this when she is real low, so I try to be understanding about it.

- She said to me a couple weeks ago when she was angry: 'You have me... you have me as long as you want!' When she was calmer I asked her what she meant by that. She said that she knew herself, and that she would end up working on our marriage and family because that was the right thing to do.

This is such a ride sometimes. Just last week two days after she setup NC with OM I remember she feel asleep with her arm around me, cuddling affectionately. The next day when I came home for lunch she greeted me with a bunch of big kisses and affection. Was that real? Was that my wife working on our marriage before the bad withdrawals kicked in?

She's a wonderful person. She just has some real bad days. Other times we are talking together and playing piano and enjoying it. She's just damn brutal with her comments when she's low.

I definately feel she is here because her conscious and family are telling her it's the right thing to do. I am hoping that she will want it more for herself as time progresses.

By the way, thanks Believer, you've always been helpful to me. I really appreciate it.

She is still in withdrawel. And feeling the shame of what she has done. It took me months to get over the idea that people thought I was a peice of crap, and that everyone was talking about me (when they probably weren't) and the embarassment. I thought early on - now I am the failure in the marriage. still to this day I still cring when we are around certain groups of people or family - thinking I am the failure of the marriage, that I am the bad person, that I am low. But luckily after 8 months of sole searching, I have accepted that I am a GOOD person, and I made horrible mistakes, but I am not who I was then. Your wife will get there, it's a long road, most of us FWW's still have our days, weeks or months struggling with it.


This too will pass as she comes further and further out of the "fog" and her A isn't so close. Right now she is overwhelmed with emotions, shame, sadness, - she probably isn't feeling one happy or good feeling. it was enough for me to almost check myself into the hospital. These feelings for OM will subside in time...and the more the disappate the more she will see clearer and she will still hurt, but that feeling of confusion from missing him will be gone.


The paranoia is normal too - i even thought my H was having an A early on (different from when he ACTUALLY had an A 6 months later) The WS mind is full of paranoia, of being caught, of loosing out, of all those things, and it takes a bit for all that to clear. She probably even thinks people who barely know her, know and are talking about her, looking at her, judging her...when in fact they have not a clue. I know - I went through all these feelings. I was worried that even though I told the whole truth - what if OM wanted to get back at us for telling his wife, and made up stuff and told H, what if he didn't believe me, what if life didn't get better, what if I was condemned to being a bad person my whole life - the list goes on and on. This too will pass in time.


She is still in withdrawel and hense still in what they call the fog. My withdrawel was only a week, but my fog lasted longer. i still blamed my H for alot for months after until I realized even my neglect in my own marriage I was party responsible for as I never communicated properly my unhappieness, so how was H to know how unhappy I was. But this took months and months...at first it was all because of his neglect and his not listening to me, that we married for the wrong reasons, that there were signs, that I had put up with it for too long...but the further I got from the A, the clearer I saw - there was alot of that my fault too - my need to try and change him, my lack of communicating, my conflict avoidance as I wanted things to be good for him. Once again, this will too pass in time.


This is a good sign that as her withdrawel ends and things become calmer, she will be comitted to making this work. Even if it is all coming out wrong right now, she is doing what is right now. And this is a VERY courageous thing to do. To give up something that FEELS right (as much as we know it isnt) to go to something that is scary, doesn't feel right and is full of pain, shame, and guilt. BUt it is the right thing to do, and the rewards for sticking with the right thing are great - a stronger marriage, a new marriage where the communication grows like it never did before...but this all takes time. She needs to heal as much as you need to heal, of course in different ways.

Is she in IC? Has she read Love Busters? It's so hard not to LB when you are low...I was an emotional reactor and my toungue became a weapon when I was low. This took me 6-7 months post A to realize and start to change. I would react to my H's LB's and his pain sometimes very cruely.

Hang in there Sundog - you are being a great husband. She will come around. Trust that the stuff she does is real...she does love you - she just is dealing with a huge weight of her own that comes when the A ends and reality sets in.

Sundog and wife - I hope that you both will keep posting and reading here. Know that your son is in my prayers, and has been for some time. You both are going through EXTREME stress. Be good to each other.

You two are awesome. Thanks for the great response Dorry, it's great to hear from a FWW about this.

As down or angry she sometimes is, I still look forward to my weekends and evenings at home with her. Those moments where the problems disappear and we click for a few hours are precious, and they give me a glimmer of what we can achieve in the future.

Sounding all mushy... I'm gonna go home.