A bit of background:

I am the wayward spouse, my wife and I have been back together about 7 months now. There has been NC with the affair partner and I have completely recommitted to our marriage. We have made some good changes in our life and are more in love now than we ever have been before. We have been married 23 years.

She occasionally runs into triggers and has been able to deal with them pretty well...however this weekend my wife had some triggers due to dealing with Thanksgiving (it was last year at this time that I was really deep into my affair). She also mentioned seeing something on her iPad (an old Google search or something) from when she was researching my affair partner early this year (before we were back together). The combination of both of those really hurt her again and she has struggled a lot over the past couple of days. It was so bad yesterday that she didn't even want me in her life anymore - said it was too hard to deal with. She said she was feeling like I was just going to leave her again and throw her away like I did before (I admit I did/said some bad stuff in the affair). I told her that I wasn't giving up on her or our marriage - no way, now how. Later in the day she realized that I wasn't going to leave her and she got a lot better. However, this afternoon she said she is still very emotional and struggling.

We have gone through marriage counseling together earlier this year and dealt with the issues that caused the affair.

So I'm just looking for any guidance or suggestions as to how to help her deal with the triggers...what else can I do to help ?

Thank you everyone for your support.

Hi EM, Lets hope you can get back on board soon.

Triggers are incredibly painful and as you've experienced the BS commonly feels like they are done when they happen. You have to be really thorough about eliminating them all. Maybe next year you can come up with an entirely new way to mark this time of year, perhaps go away together? Make new traditions?

Have you followed all the steps in Dr H's plan?

Every single one?

For example did you expose the A? It is one of the major ingredients required to give the BS stamina to hold out through recovery.

That's a direct quote from Dr Harley. He says exposure gives the BS the "stamina" required to get through this with everybody's support.

We didn't follow all the steps in his plan completely but altered some of his steps to fit our circumstances. The affair was exposed to family and friends (if that's what you mean). We have both talked and talked about everything - we are way more open and communicate our feelings now (one of our issues from the past).

She has been very strong during recovery but I know the holidays are going to be tough (because of feelings from last year). I do like what you mention regarding an entirely new way to mark this time of year - I was thinking of something very similar. I think maybe if we can do some new things together to help take her mind off the events it might help as well.

We have also relocated further away from the AP (sort of a new "restart" to our lives and marriage). In some ways that has been better but in other ways worse since she's away from some of her friends now (we are working on making new friends).

Hi EM, welcome to Marriage Builders. It sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things, but I am concerned with your comment that you have "altered" some of the steps. That usually leads to disaster. Can you be more specific about what you have altered?

I think it is nice that you are "communicating" more, but do you have a plan to restore the romantic love to your marriage? Have the poor boundaries that led to the affair been eliminated?

Yes the boundaries have been eliminated and we have a much more romantic loving marriage than we ever had before. We both have full access to each other's emails, texts, everything - nothing is hidden.

We have both said many times that we feel more love now for each other than we ever have - it was like the affair threw us back into each other's arms.

One thing I didn't do correctly was how I ended the relationship - I wrote the AP a letter and mailed it to her. But I didn't show my wife the letter ahead of time and said stuff in the letter I shouldn't have (how it was hard to break things off, etc.) At the time I still had huge feelings for the AP and it was hard to just break things off so brutally. That being said those feelings have completely faded for me and I never want anything to do with her (she lied to me among other things).

But my wife and I do a bunch of UA together, have eliminated Love Busters, are overflowing each other's Love Banks, etc.

The past few months have been really good but this weekend was just a setback. She said the hurt was so great that she wanted me out of her life (her thinking that she would hurt less I think). She got past that when she realized that I wasn't going to leave her (I never will do that) - she said she finally realized yesterday that I wasn't backing down - I'm there for us and our marriage.

I think today she might just be feeling sad about everything she said yesterday (she brought up a lot of stuff about the affair)...it hurt me a bit but I can take it. I think she might be feeling that she hurt me back again - I've told her that I understand it and can handle it though.

I just hope this is a temporary reaction and I can get her to move past it.

Just wanted to add a few things that other folks might find helpful in recovery...

We spend a lot more time just being intimate together - holding each other, talking, being affectionate. During the summer while we were working on recovery we didn't even have cable hooked up and we still hardly watch any TV (in the past we would sit in different parts of the room at night and hardly talk to each other - we were both on our laptops or watching TV).

Our lifestyle has changed back a bit - we occasionally watch TV but we do so together, sitting next to each other, just being more "together". Just little things have made a huge difference...

I was also the WS, one thing we HAD to do (as I see you've done) was to get away from where the A took place, for my BH just being in the city where my A took place was a giant trigger, we began recovery but I feel it was stalled until we actually left the city, it was then that I could see him begin to relax. Also make sure you are meeting all her needs, and that your EP's continue to remain in place, continue to give her as much reassurance that you are committed to her and your marriage as she needs. You also need to recognize that she is going to have good days and some not so good days - let her know that it's ok, and love, love, LOVE her.
Recovery can take years, what we have done as WS's is the most horrific act there is, sometimes it's day by day, sometimes it's hour by hour.

Getting away was good for both of us actually...we lived in a very small town (like 800 people) and one thing we both realized is we didn't have any good friends we could talk to (we were sort of isolated). Plus she spent a lot of lonely nights in our home when I moved out so she had many bad memories there.

We felt moving was so important that we are willing to allow our home (what once was our dream home) to go into foreclosure (too upside down to sell it).

We now live in a large metropolitan area with lots more activities, friends and fun to have - it feels like we are living a new life (in many ways I guess we are).

I do like what you said about good days and bad days...I guess we had gotten so used to having mainly good days recently that we weren't prepared for an occasional bad day.