control, thanks for responding to my post and for sharing some of your story. My heart TRULY goes out to you in this stage of your journey. I have compared the first year after disclosure to living in the aftermath of an atomic bomb explosion... all you see is smoke and debris and cannot make sense of where to even start to pick up the pieces because you can't even see pieces... only ashes and smoke. I hope you have good support around you and that you are practicing self-care as often as you can. I'm impressed that you are already at the point of realizing that asking questions about your life together will get you no where. It took me much longer... and as evidenced by my last message... I may not even be there yet. The fact that you are says a lot about your strength and wisdom. Take good care of yourself! You deserve it. 

Number9, I have wrestled with this same question.  Also, I sometimes want to Tell. him. Stuff.  Humph.  For me this is especially hard because:  still living together!  And in theory, we are still “working on us.”  I am not working that out with him though.  Too dangerous because:

In the last two weeks or so, I have started to think of every conversation that involves my feelings as an emotional beating.  “What do I want from this conversation,” I am trying to ask myself.  “Is the thing I want to know, or the thing I want to express, so important that it is worth the emotional beating? Which is abso,ute,y certain to come, no matter how simple I think the th8ng might be, it is not, never, not ever.  And is it worth the hours and sometimes days it will take me to process that beating?”  Will this information change the actions I need to take? Will it change my ability to heal?”

I contrast that with the feelings I start to have when my husband is away for a few days for work.  Sure, I still feel grief and anger, and I feel worn out and confused.  And I have a lot of healing to do!  But when I keep separate from my husband , I start to heal.  When I connect with him, it not only reminds me of the past hurts and my feelings of love I am still trying to get over—it is more than a reminder of the hurt—it IS the hurt.  It is a continuation of the hurt.  It is me just jumping right back into the hurt.   Active hurt:  me looking for hurt! He will never resolve things for me.  I am trying to remember this.  Getting better at remembering but still hard. 

Don’t be a glutton for pain, number9.  Don’t go seeking it out.  There is never any resolution except in ourselves.

On another thread, I posted a link to an essay in th NYTimes.  It is great on this topic of wishing we could understand  the past, and why betrayals make it hard to heal because we do not understand the past. Ana Fels, Great Betrayals, NYTimes.

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (May 5, 2019 1:03 am)

OnMyOwnTwoFeet, you bring out may excellent questions to ask prior to "climbing in the (emotional) ring" with our gay ex-or-current husbands, who so obviously have problems with truth and honesty in the first place. The fact that you feel healing starting to happen when he is not there is exactly how it was for me. I did not feel emotionally safe until he moved out. No longer needing to care about where he was, who he was with, and what he was doing with who he was with started my journey to healing and being OK without him. And forcing myself to stop trying to fix (resolve) something that could never be fixed (which is often the impetus behind seeking for truth) propelled me forward along the healing path. Just recently (after being apart and not communicating for two years), I started to go back into "fixing" mode in wanting to write to him and reopen the past. So thanks to you all for pulling me back off the cliff of insanity and into the world of reality... where perpetrators of pain do not become reliable rescuers.