WH and I have been separated for over 12 months now and he's never made a move in my direction. I don't find myself 'angry' very often anymore, but when I do, I see red.

What I'm still so angry about is him having unprotected sex with OW while I was still breastfeeding. I had to give up breastfeeding overnight when I found out about his A because if I'd contracted something (like Hepatitis, or HIV etc) I could have passed it on in my breastmilk.

How do you 'get over' that?

All WH said about it was (in a poor me kind of way), 'great, just another way it looks like 'WH' didn't give a ****** about his wife and child'.

Like all of us, I suppose, I want him to FEEL what he did to us! I want him to be REALLY sorry...but it just doesn't seem he ever will be.

Girl look I'm still working on this! It's been almost 4years now and I still see red too. I suppose the answer is we need to process these events and memories in some way that helps us move forward not stay stuck. I wish I had the answers. I wish I could just lock up all my sad memories and memories to come and ignore them but we are only human. In the face of an EMA and in your case that's such a major betrayal. I don't think I could get past it either. Just being honest. I know there are more wise reactions but this is all I have to offer. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Get over the anger for yourself as it will hold you back... but it is okay to hold on to the anger towards him. This is a motivating thing that can help you keep intact your boundaries.
He may never be sorry in the way you want him to be... and even though it is cliche... a life well lived is your best revenge.
Be happy that you are okay and that your child is not harmed. Some on these boards have not been so lucky. But you are okay... no need to see red right now. If you have been separated that long... perhaps it is time for you to file for divorce so that you can begin your life anew with someone that will love and respect you.
Choose to not be so angry that you see red. It could trun to bitterness and that is only harming you. He's not worth you losing your happiness over.

MEDC

anger is energizing
sadness is not

sometimes that is why a person hangs on to anger ... for the energy rush ... but it's exhausting to be emotional for long periods of time

do you journal?
for some, it helps get the thoughts / feelings out of the head and onto the paper

Pep

I will never entirely get over what WW did, never. I will and am getting to the point that I can deal with it effectively and more healthy manner. I do resign myself to hold her accountable regarding our children forever and she can like it or lump it, it matters not to me.

I can associate with both of those quotes as well. The Confronting occurred on 2/3, so of course it's fresh and raw. BUT, my emotional state since my wife left me 6 weeks and began this affair MONTHS ago has degraded so badly I've lost some control over my emotions - except anger. That's the only time I feel in control, the sadness leaves me emotionally fatigued.

I can think of many similiar things: When I was first told the magical "I don't love you anymore" I went the next day to get Zoloft. She went too, to get birth control pills.

Anger can drive you through the storm if you control it. Feel it, don't act it, and it will do wonders for your emotional control. That's easier said than done when you go through this!

Well said!

Thank you all so much for your replies. I really appreciate every one of your thoughts.

What I'm really gaining from your comments, is that it's OK to be angry, as long as we don't act on it. When I first found out about the affair, my anger scared me (not in a homicidal way!!) but just that I'd never felt anger like it and it got me so worked up. I just couldn't handle it.

Then, because I didn't want to feel the anger anymore, I began to feel sad. That's when I began to feel depressed and lost hope (in life in general and any thought of ever being happy again). I haven't journaled as well as I'd have liked throughout this Pep. I guess I've just been so 'busy' this past 12 months in trying to change and grow myself after the things WH said to me (i.e. - he never had anything to talk with me about...so I've been reading, reading, reading to try and make myself a more interesting person).

Hopeandpray, I don't think I'll entirely get over it either. I find it hard to imagine that any BS could ever get to the point of saying they're 'entirely' over it. Moving on is a different thing, and as MEDC said, revenge by way of a rebuilding a fantastic life for ourselves, and maybe one day with someone else, is the best we can do that. But the scars from the wounds won't ever entirely be erased, right?

For me, as Jayban said, the sadness has left me so fatigued that my boundaries are still all over the place. The anger (the healthy kind) is helping me say 'No! I wasn't a perfect wife and I made mistakes, but I didn't deserve what you did and I don't deserve the way you're still treating me'! In a way, it's helping me get to the point of making a final decision for ME and my child, instead of sitting on the fence being too scared to really acknowledge what I want and the way I want to be treated.

I'm learning that anger was a God-given emotion (which means there's a good use for it!) and that it will help me, if used in the right way. Thanks everyone!

Hi LL,

Anger can be a powerful motivator. If you can channel it you can use it to make difficult changes in your life that might otherwise seem impossible. If its hard to handle sometimes I also found that working out and exercising tended to curb the anger a bit and you end up with some nice side effects (I kinda wish I was still angry in that regard <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> its really hard for me to get motivated to go to the gym anymore)

I wouldn't worry too much about what WH said your negative traits were. Think about who you really want to be and make it happen. Don't worry who he thought you should be. WS are so full of crap most of the time when they are spewing that stuff that their opinion is usually worth next to nothing. What do you really want to do? Well here's your chance, go out and make it happen!

Cheers,

Miker

Lucyloo,

I am working hard on anger issues. With a WS that expresses absolutely no remorse for they have done to you and your family, anger can become pretty all-consuming.

There is a book I like to read from Thich Nhat Hanh on how to deal with anger. It is proving helpful and healing for me. What he essentially says is that we need to remove ourselves from the person we believe to be the source of our anger. We need to take care of our anger, take care of ourselves, and be compassionate with ourselves. Our anger makes us suffer, not the WS. We need to look at our anger like dung and decompose it like compost, turn it into fertilizer, and plant flowers. I guess decomposing means learning to understand the source of our anger.

Lucyloo,
I've still got a lot of anger, a lot of crap to decompose. All the fertilizer that I've come up with so far though, I've used to fertilize other sources of joy --- my relationships with my daughters, my work life, my friendships. There are still bad days though, when the anger wells up and completely consumes my thoughts ... time for a retreat from the world, a long hike in the mountains followed by a long hot bath and pampering myself. Breathe and smile, breathe and smile...

I am only 3 months removed from DDay, so who knows what I will go through in the coming months. But given that my WW seems to be on her way to being a FWW, I don't feel much anger anymore.

Sometimes it does start to boil up when I think of certain things. But I bring myself back to sanity by looking inside myself with brutal honesty and asking if I would not have done many of the same things she did if the opportunity had presented itself. I'll never know for sure, but given my own unhappiness in the marriage (an unhappiness that I didn't even completely recognize until we started recovering from her A) I know I was vulnerable to the same mistakes. That realization helps me to not judge her, and think of it all as a tragedy, and not treachery. I just take solace in the happy home we seem to be building now.

The only thing that does bother me sometimes is the lack of remorse for or understanding of the pain that I did go through. I forgive my wife because at the time she chose an affair, I really don't think she understood or believed how painful it would be for me. But then she saw the pain of the weeks after DDay. She saw me not sleep for days, punch through walls, and edge closer to suicide than I ever thought I could come. Yet she never seemed to feel any regret for causing that pain. Her quote was "I'm sorry it happened, but I'm not sorry for you" (since in her mind I brought it all on myself). But I read early on in SAA that I need to do this recovery without expecting an apology, so again, when the lack of remorse bothers me I just think that what I want now is a happy marriage and home, so I let the anger go as it does me no good.

NS