Dear MB friends:

thank you for checking on me and asking how I was doing...I started taking anti-depressants, because I just could not handle this sadness and hopelessness anymore. I have been taking it for two weeks. The sadness is still there, but the thoughts are more blurry and don't cause the sharp agonizing pain anymore. Now it is like a deep dull heartache. I can drive to and from work now and I can manage to think about absolutely nothing for that time. No more thoughts about the A, that attack me. I can also be with H now without hating him and attacking him. I would say that this is some progress, but it is still terrible, compared to the happiness and love I used to feel. This A has destroyed so much of our life. H is still trying hard to rebuild our marriage and now I can allow him to get close to me again. We love each other and I hope that we will recover from this.

Well, if you are not doing lots better, at least it is good to hear you are not doing worse!

I hope you continue to improve and a year from now I hope you can be one that is able to say things are really good.

Thanks for letting us know how you are. We do care.

SS

Liza,

I'm glad you are on the anti depressants. There is no shame in them. The effects of an A= TRAUMA.
We never question the need of a trauma victim for medication.

Note: If you notice any side effects, like sleepiness or decreased sexual drive, don't just stop the antiDs. There are alot of different medications available, and everyone will affect you differently. I had to switch meds, my second one worked perfectly.

Keep remembering TIME TIME TIME. I will bet you, that in a year, if you are still coming to MB, it will only be to post messages of hope for people in shock at JFO. You will be one of those veterans, like Leilana, Lor or Orchid, who share their encouraging stories of survival, recovery and healing.

Hi Liza,
I was on Ant-d's for awhile. I need to get back on them. I had to quit. They kept me calm. I stopped because they made me too sleepy. I could hardly stay awake to study. I think that is partly why I failed my first test. When the semester ends, I'm going to try again, with a different one. I have to finish school, so I cannot be on one that makes me sleepy, I guess I was a little to calm.

Anyway, it is good to know that things are not worse. Just keep in mind, I heard somewhere, maybe it was the Harleys, the emotional effects of discovering an A is similar to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It takes time to recover from it. A very long time. Or you can be like me who has learned to put everything on a back burner, and guess what, soon, you run out of burners, and your stove blows up.

Dear MB friends:

after going through the deep darkness of depression I see some light again. I took the anti-d's for about three weeks but I couldn't continue them because they made me feel like nothing mattered anymore. I could have left my H and not cared about anything. I felt that this was not the real me and I stopped the anti-d's. I rather go through the agony of remembering the A and our occasional blow-ups about it, then living in this blurry "I don't care"-mood.

Now more and more the A seems like a bad dream, a nightmare from which I woke up, afraid and in darkness. It starts to feel unreal. I look at my H and I see the man I love more than anything in this world. He always was the center of my life, the one person I loved so much. The A was something that he deeply regrets and he is working very hard with the IC to find the reasons for his MLC. The A does not fit with his personality and with my view of him before the A and now. I think that is why it is beginning to feel unreal. It takes time- a lot of time for this process.

Every day my H is showing me his love, trying to prove that I can trust him again. He always says that he does not expect me to make big steps fast, but that we will slowly but continuously build and that he will wait for all that time that I will need.

I hope that all of you had a Thanksgiving that was filled with gratefulness for those things in life that really matter. There is the smile of a small child or the hug of a good friend or the sparkle in the eye of the person you love most...

I am thankful now for every day that we can be together. I love those afternoons in front of the fireplace cuddling with the kids under the big blanket, playing, hugging and laughing.

When he whispers to me :'We will get through this", I see the light for our future.

I am so glad to see positive in your posts again after the hurt and pain you have been through. Thank you for sharing your feelings with us.

Here's to a very happy future !

SS

Hi Liza,

Happy to hear from you. I have tears of joy swelling my eyes. I happy that things look promising and I seconds Stillseeking

Had a good Thanksgiving also.

Dear friends,

after many months where I was too depressed to even read here at MB, I now feel that I am well enough to talk to you again.

It has been 8 months now since d-day and no contact between my H and OW. With great patience he is trying to rebuild our love. I am the one who is still reluctant. I was very hurt by his A and especially by his lying. In January he admitted that his A had been going on for two months prior to d-day and not two weeks as he had claimed before. This lie did terrible damage to our recovery.

After a huge fight about this lie we decided to go to his IC for MC. We went there three times and it was a disaster. The MC couldn't lead the conversation well, had no therapy plan, allowed a lot of my anger to come out and then would dig around in my anger. H got very sad, thought I would leave him anyway. After every session I just felt horrible. In the end the MC kind of kicked me out of H's and his beautiful therapy arrangement, said that I had to come alone first and together with H and H had to come alone as well (three sessions a week-that's how you can make a nice living).

I saw that this was not helping at all. One evening in the book store I found this book about "Forgiveness" ( I'll look up the author for you)and since I started working with those principles by myself and together with H, everything has gotten so much better.

My problem was that I could not really face that huge amount of anger that I felt towards H. In all these months since d-day I never dared to be truely angry at him, because how could I try to love him if I allowed that anger to be felt. So I kept pushing the anger away...I felt that I had given him absolutely no reason to have this A. I felt that it was extremely unjust to me what he had done. I started addressing these points with H in the past two weeks and it makes a world of difference when he listens and says that he can understand me.

Overall I am convinced that time and patience is necessary for a recovery after an A. This cannot be rushed at all.

But what is so very sad about this -the total destruction of everything I loved and believed in. I loved my H more than anything in the world, now there is only a fraction of that left. I hope that it will grow again, but it is so much work. There are so many days where we could be happy together, but instead the A and all the trauma it caused comes up in the discussion again and again.

Whoever is contemplating having an A: if you decide to go for it be very clear to yourself that it will destroy a part of the relatioship with your spouse forever -in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine.

Hi Liza,

I'm sorry you were so depressed. I really hope you can rebuild your M.

I've heard good things about the MB weekends. I wanted to go when there was one here in my area. 1)can't afford it. 2) H would not agree if I asked. (I hinted and he refused).

Using the IC as a MC may not have been a good idea. Have you tried the phone counseling with the Harleys? Or a Coach who is pro marriage? Cerri on MB is a coach. She usually hangs out on GQII.

I've thought of you on and off and wondered how you were doing.

Take care