Re: Reunited after his affair and I still hurt

Re: Reunited after his affair and I still hurt ----- From: Bugga - Date: 02 Dec 1997

Boy, I wish I could get to the point as quickly as you did. I see a great accomplishment in your working on the relationship. It seems the feelings we wish to have stay with us forever never do, and the ones that stay around are the ones we fight with and wish never to return.

Feelings, no matter what they are have a purpose. If I don't allow myself to mourn a death in my own way, or allow my sorrow to come and go as it should, I'm stuffing it away; where do these feelings go? I think they stay with us and resurface at the most INOPPORTUNE time. Sort of like laughing in church or at a funeral, if you can relate to that. So even though some feelings don't get the Welcome Wagon, they have a purpose. No one really enjoys the discomfort of certain feelings. We may associate feelings with an experience in the past that we're trying to forget. This is an area I know little about, but I do know that it was my tendency. I bet if we try to associate a bad feeling with the knowledge of a reward of better days ahead, it would diminish the harshness a little each time it comes around. But that means we permit ourselves to feel. If we try to quash the feeling every time, it's going to come up at the most inconvenient time (Murphy's Law), and we've hindered our healing process.

When I look back in my childhood, or even in certain workplace situations, I see where some characteristics were not viewed as being appropriate. For instance, how many women do you know who are labelled "Hot Head". It's so masculine. I think anger has been viewed as a masculine feeling. If a woman gets angry, she's just a bitch (or has PMS). The same applies to the warm and fuzzy feelings, only the opposite is true. So in a way, we may have been conditioned to stuff the feeling.

In your case, I think I would get angry from time to time. Sad or scared too though, among other things. If anger is the only feeling that keeps coming up and is causing a problem for you NOW, I would ask myself a few things. Is it really the anger that is the problem? Is it the FEAR of another affair? You mentioned "...I can't get the other affair off my mind. It haunts me and I wonder if it always will. If I think about it too much I get angry all over again.

How can I get rid of it? How can I stop the images of what happened? How can I ... I can't believe someone would do such a thing? Any answers out there?..." These are excellent questions because I bet you may already know. I think a good dissection of these questions would be healthy. Then examine your answers. The only rule is complete honesty.

Little exercises like this help me. I'm very visual anyway. I may not be helping, but I understand the frustration of not having answers.

Best of luck to you. Bugga