After an affair, your life doesn't belong to you anymore. For over a year, I couldn't control my own thoughts.
The turmoil in my head was viciously repetitive but savagely random. With this blog, I began to exorcise the demons holding my head hostage.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Hyper-Emotions & False Forgiveness

No real memories from the next day, Thanksgiving.  I must have held it all together rather nicely.  I faced my dad knowing he KNEW and hadn't said anything to me at all.  Not a damn thing.  In hind sight, which is always ever so much clearer, I'm glad he just played along, kept out of it.  I was not ready to stir my parents into the mix.

I went back through old emails today to try and get a grip on the timeline.  What I found surprised me.  I had told Richard that I forgave him!!  What?  No way the law of physics would tolerate such rapid accents and descents on a coaster.  I think I must have fallen off the coaster and landed in that evil, spinning tea-cup ride!  Just a few short days ago I had tried to throw Richard's sorry ass out on the street!  Royal Bitch ruled!  So, when in the hell did Lovelorn Lucy show up?  I blame her for the false forgiveness.  I can't be held accountable for drivel that spilled out of her mushy mouth.

He cried when I said the words.  Or rather...when SHE said the words, "I forgive you."  We had just enjoyed another round of hysterical bonding when the words rose up and dripped right off of my lips like melted butter.  He sobbed.

Why did I say it?  Why did I even think it?  Forgiveness?  Less than 2 months post Dday?

Hysterical bonding isn't just about sex.  It is also about emotions.  They should be called hyper-emotions.  Just like the sex, everything feels elevated, touching every part of you on a new level.  The love, the agony, the anger, every emotion you feel...you feel more intensely than ever before. When we had sex, we did things we'd never done before, not even when we first started dating.  When we talked, when we shared our feelings, we spoke of passion and pain as though we were reciting Shakespeare.   Read these emails we exchanged after the false forgiveness.  These are just a small snippet of our amped up emotional communication.
From Richard to me:
My Darling Wife:

When you read this, it will either be the last thing you read tonight or the first thing you read in the morning. Either way, I hope it will make you happy and give you hope. I want it to be something you come back to time and again to for healing, especially after you have visited something that causes you emotional cutting.

Today is the day you told me that you forgive me. I cannot think of any three words in my life that were more welcomed. Thank you so very much. You have made me strong again. You have given me a reason to hope and to go on every day. I will not let you down. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. To grow together. To grow old together. To take care of each other forever. I cannot see it or imagine it any other way.

You think I only wrote to her. Well now I am writing to you. And I am sane; saner than I have been in a long time.

I love you my darling wife. I have loved you since the moment I fell in love with you which as near as I can figure it was the day we were walking around New York and you tripped off the curb and you called yourself a spaz. I saw the unassuming, wholesome, laugh-at-myself, free spirited Mountaineer that captured me forever. You were so different than anyone I had ever met. So confident, so comfortable with yourself, so you. And it just got better – I loved everything about you! You were my type! You are my type.

I love everything about you. Your happy genes. Your blue eyes. Your long, white, soft body. The way everyone looks at you when you walk in the room. I have always loved you. I have never fallen out of love with you. Never.

Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for believing in us.
You are my only girlfriend.
You are my true love.
I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I have never seen it any other way.
I love you.

Richard


My reply to him:
Good morning, My darling husband:
I want to share a few thoughts with you this morning.  
You thanked me for forgiving you.  It was the only choice I could make because I could not imagine life without you.
We will be so much stronger now.  We will truly appreciate our love and how lucky we are to have one another.
Please remember that with complete honesty we can get through anything together.  Don't try to judge what you should or shouldn't tell me.  If you are concerned something will hurt me, be assured that hiding something, withholding anything or lying will hurt me 100 times more.
If you need to talk about anything, I will listen.  I will not judge you or try to control you.  I only want to be there when you need me no matter the reason.  I believe in you.  I know what a good man you are.  When you doubt how wonderful you are, just come to me and I will show you.  I could never love a lesser man the way I have always loved you.
So...be happy today.  We have much to be happy about.  We have much to look forward to.  We have such a great deal to be thankful for.
The past is behind us and our future is so bright.
I will always love you.
Shawn


Lovelorn Lucy embraced the hyper-emotions, loved planning a new, solid future with her man, but Royal Bitch had other ideas.
Why else would I have sent this to Jaymie the same day?  I even attached a copy of Richard's email for her to enjoy.  Had to wave my flag of victory, right?  
He no longer loves you, if he ever did at all.  His heart belongs to me.  It always did.  
Hopefully we all learned something from this brief gap in my husband's sanity.
I learned that he needs me more than I ever knew.  He learned that I will always be there for him if he only asks.
You should learn that allowing yourself to be used by a married man lessens you, cheapens you.
I don't think that's how you want to live, is it?
`Shawn`

On the surface, I worked to wrap Richard around my little pinky.  Wanted him close.  Told him what I knew he wanted to hear and I think I MOSTLY meant all I professed.  He was getting all of Lovelorn Lucy and lapping it up.  But, I wasn't done punishing him or Jaymie.  Royal Bitch had taken to operating covertly, setting up Black Ops behind a facade of potential happy ever after.
Those hyper-emotions are so close to reality.  But, they aren't real.  It's like "After-Affair Fog".  You make your reality what you need it to be, not what it actually is.
Exhausting, ain't it??

6 comments:

Scabs said...

Oh, I'm sorry! Is it terrible that I laughed at the end of your story! So funny. But I remember feeling the same things. Honestly, such is the mind, heart and soul of the badly traumatized woman, right?

I had won! I could control the situation. It nice to be able to look back and see how far we've come, isn't it?

shawnthewife said...

EMS: There are two things about this blog that always make my day:
1. Getting a comment that says my post helped someone move forward.
2. Getting a comment that says I made someone laugh.
Finding grins wrapped in grimaces lightens my heart.

And, yep. I craved control of the hurricane. Looking back at that idiocy makes me laugh.
Hope & Hugs, Shawn

Anonymous said...

I love your posts. The way that you can now look back and dissect the different sides of yourself during that time. It's amazing the swings in emotions that all of this brings with it!

shawnthewife said...

Beautiful Mess: Thanks for reading. We have a lot in common, one thing being the ability to help heal ourselves by writing.
Back then I thought the whirlwind of emotions would never settle. Now I know they do slow down. I don't expect emotional winds ever calm completely, but they do diminish with time.
Hope & Hugs, Shawn

liveandlearn47 said...

I felt at the time of Hyper emotions / Hyper bonding that I could out do and go beyond anything as intoxicating as being holed up in a hotel room with an AP... and I did. It was a mix of huge highs and lows with carnal physical releases that continued for many months....

In hindsight I now see this period of time as necessary - the reclaiming that occurred was beyond what I typically could have mustered. Shit - what did I have to loose - who doesn't in some way want to hang from the rafters in ecstasy, The tool of this period I see now is to take down all barriers that my H had at the time that his affair was somehow better physically or more intense (he did describe their physical part as "electric" "she responded in ways you never have" etc) - his fog cleared immediately after I opened the door physically in the early weeks after d-day. He experience electricity and I did respond in ways I never had....

It does pass (hello 6 month rage fest) - but by the time it did - his view of what he had done had turned to disgust and regret.

I identify totally with you posts as another BS with a reconciling WS would do.

Anonymous said...

Ahh, so you were the porsche also. He married a beautiful amazing gorgeous woman, of course he did. He deserved it. Mine too. Ef them both! I could have given my gorgeous self to a man who appreciated me - not one who appreciates every beauty in the world...so many women, only one prick.