Just a little update on me & WH. It has been 7 weeks since D-Day. I came back & read the post I first posted when I found out about the A. It's amazing how far I've come in just 7 weeks. WH & I have been to 6 marriage counseling sessions, and they helped, but we feel we no longer need to go to the counselor. She was making excuses for WH's behavior, and that made both of us upset. For those of you unfamiliar with my situation, my WH had a purely PA while overseas in Iraq for 15 months with another female soldier. It happened 5 or 6 times over the course of 9 months. He confessed upon his return, and has begged for my forgiveness. We have taken care of NC, and I know WH has not had any contact with OW. Fortunately she has not caused too much drama, with the exception of blabbing about the A to everyone in the unit (after she found out WH confessed). We attended a marriage retreat a few weeks ago, and that really helped. I am in the healing stage right now, and it gets easier every day. What helps the most is that WH is bending over backwards to do everything to make me feel comfortable & confident in our relationship, and to regain my trust. He has given up all freedom & privacy, and has no complaints about having to do so. I have all his pw's for e-mail, cell phone, etc., and have the freedom to check up on him if I feel necessary at any time. We have been able to maintain peace in our house now without an arguement about the A for over 2 weeks, which is a huge deal for us. I was having a very hard time with the mental images, but have been using the techniques the therapist gave me on how to push them out of my head. It has worked nicely. We have started to regain our physical relationship, and I am fairly confident that this will never happen again. WH says he justified his actions by thinking "I'm a million miles away, haven't seen my wife in 5 months (he didn't start the affair until he was gone for 5 months and this female soldier pursued him for a long time), and she will never know." What he didn't realize is that when he returned home to me, that the guilty would consume him and he would have to confess. We have no children together & are not financially bound to one another, so I feel we are staying together for the right reasons (because we truly love one another). I honestly believe this A happened for a reason, because I believe my WH took our relationship for granted before this, and I believe he will never do that again. I feel we will come out of this with a much stronger bond than we had before, and for that I am greatful. We also renewed our vows at the marriage retreat, which made me feel a lot better.

In any event, that's my story! Thank you all for the wonderful support you gave me in those first few weeks. I would never have been able to make it without coming here & venting my sadness & hurt.

Do you mind sharing those techniques?

Thanks for sharing your updates. It is always good to hear about progress. Tomorrow will be one month since d-day for me. I had been doing ok till Monday of this week. The last few days have been hard.

Renewing your marriage vows is an excellent idea. Glad to hear the retreat went well for you. My church is sponsoring one in April so I'm trying to get my W to attend with me.

As far as the techniques for getting those awful mental images out of your head, basically as soon as they come into your head you focus on something else immediately. If you have to get up from the couch & refocus your activity, or change the channel on the TV to refocus your mind, you do it. The car is where I have the biggest issue, so when I start to feel upset or get images in my head, I put on a happy CD that I enjoy singing to, so I push the thoughts away. I have to tell you that with time, it does get easier. At first I thought these images would never go away. They were so painful, and awful for me. The images do come into my mind now & again, but using the techniques help -- but more impotant, time helps. The images that come into my head now are nowhere nears as painful for me as they were in the beginning, when the wound was fresh. It still hurts, but not as much. This gives me hope that eventually even if I do get these images in my head, I won't feel the pain involved with them.

I think time is the most important factor. Also, we (or me, I should say) used to obsess over these images (and I was not even there, of course, so they were not real images). I used to think about the act of what he did with her, because he gave me details (I asked for them). When I told my H about this, he reminded me that the images in my head were MUCH more explicit & passionate than the reality of what happened. So, I was obsessing over something that was not only real, but worse than the reality.

I hope this helped. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />