Forgiving a WS is a very though thing to do. I forgave my W May 1. The first day after I felt pretty good about it but after, my roller coaster made a spiral way down.

Seems like things are tougher now then they have been in a while. Is it satan trying to make me doubt that my forgiving was not true from the heart? Did I forgive too soon, or is this just a stage in recovery?

My anger is coming back, my sex drive is very low, I wonder if I really want to save my marriage.

What does a person do at this stage, just wait it out? Get anti-depressants? Ask MC for more IC?


Does anyone know??

beat,

Start reading the thread about "false recovery". After an affair ends....there is sometimes a honeymoon period that looks like real recovery....but isn't. A good test is to answer these questions:

Are the conditions that created vulnerability in the marriage being consistently addressed? What has changed?

Forgiveness and forgetfulness are not the same thing....and they shouldn't be. Just because you forgave her, doesn't mean you won't have continuing doubts. One of the dynamics that has persisted in my marriage is that I am far more likely to feel hopeless over even MINOR problems than I did before. The triggers persist....and forgiveness is a process not an event.

What you're going through is normal. It's easy to forgive someone who betrayed you, but healing from the betrayal takes time.

Can you talk to your pastor about this? Perhaps your MC can help you "vent" and get rid of some of that anger.

And don't let satan try to convince you that your forgivness isn't genuine. You know he's the father of lies...tell him to get lost.

Thanks for the quick responses.

I'm lucky that our pastor is also our MC and he is very good at doing both.

My W had bought Tigers/Twins tickets for May 17, she told me if she could get her best friend to go with her then it was ok if I did IC for that night since our MC meetings are on Wednesday evenings anyways.

She has been doing a great job at trying to make things better but the damage has been done, she thinks I should be moving on already but I can't. She doesn't seem to want to talk about details realy and gets upset sometimes if I bring it up she feels we don't need to bring up the past.
This makes me wonder if there's more that she's hiding or she just wants to move on.

bd,

IMO, your feelings are less about forgiveness than a failure to correctly process your grief.

By this I mean the stages of denial, bargaining, anger, etc. Don’t forget, there are at least three recoveries going on simultaneously: your personal, your wife's personal, and your M. In the final analysis, the first two need to slightly lead the latter for complete success.

Many of us BS seem to have anger peaks at 6 months, a year and around two years. I have read of another peak at 5 years which seems to be the most dangerous to the M if the above grieving process has not laid the proper foundation.

Anger is a secondary emotion often driven by fear or uncertainty. You might try to establish some measure of just how much trust you place in your W, too. Hopefully this measure increases with time, which will help dissipate much of your anger. Be proactive in this. Hope is not a method.

I also think you would benefit from reading Carder's Torn Asunder. There is a passage about a BW who forgave too soon and too completely out of a Christian sense of duty. Two years later her FWH brought her in for counseling because she was becoming borderline insane. Carder encouraged her to express the anger and resentment she had kept inside. Express it right in the face of her H, too. Not until then did she begin her real recovery.

With prayers,