Figuring-it-0ut wrote:

How do you deal with the slow reveal of the facts?! Every time something new comes to the surface I'm right back to discovery day and the emotional roller coaster starts all over.
The details of what I found out last night doesnt change the bottom line but it still hurts just as much!

F-i-o.....you will have to change the mindset you've had since you've known your husband. You'll still be operating in the "I married this man, I love him, he loves me, we have a life together" mode. Unbeknownst to you he's had a side-life he kept quiet about so you've probably felt safe? secure? in the life you had together.
I've already been through stages of confusion, grief and indecision and have come out the other side knowing that although my life has been changed, irreversibly, this is all about survival and the best way to stop 'details' hurting me was to process them as somebody else' decision to hurt me. Because it was the other side of my partner, the part he hides, that was dishonest, deceiving. 
If you can separate the 2 people he is you might find it's easier to see who you yourself want to be. That probably sounds all kinds of weird haha....but it's a difficult thing to explain how our minds work when they're buried under this kind of stress but that's how I did it. 

Elle


 

lily wrote:

.....Elle there is one person standing before you.  Not two people, not two entities in one body who don't know what the other is doing.......

To live with one.....give it any label you want person/entity/half/Jekyll/Hyde.....I disregard the other.
It's the way I do it   
 

LostAtSea wrote:

.....I feel like a therapist can’t help me with my struggle. I don’t know how to stop the mindF cycle. Somehow tell me how!

Well the first thing you could do was forget the abbreviated word and just call it Mindfuck

The second step is moving away from focussing on what he did, what he said and not letting it get to you. Which is really hard, don't get me wrong...I'll be the first to tell you it's mind-numbingly demanding to stop the words/thoughts going round in your head and build a wall between the stuff you're sick of thinking about him and the mindful attention you should be giving yourself. 
I started with a simple phrase "it doesn't matter anymore" which was a mantra I'd say to myself whenever I was triggered by 'something' he said or did. But in saying that...I'm aware that even before the mantra my thinking changed, a feeling that what was happening to me was just so wrong that I had to change it.
Time with a counsellor is invaluable

Elle
 

If it wasn't that so many of us express how distressing it is it would be easy for me to believe it's a personal quirk but it isn't, it's basic, nobody likes being lied to, nobody likes being tricked, con men don't like being tricked, it's not just what you are tricked out of, it's also the basic thing of having your reality map discredited - we all have this feeling of wanting to know what's what - not know everything, that's not the point but what you do know you want it to be correct.  If grass isn't green and rain isn't wet then I would have that all wrong.  and I'd want to know that.

In our daily lives we meet people, we talk to their persona, we interact on a surface level and then we walk away.  That is a whole different ball of wax to being married.  I will just talk about my ex here - Mr Nice Guy IS NOT REAL.  Finally I realised I was interacting with a sock puppet he held on one hand and the whole of him was there standing behind it.  

Once I took this on board, that the real person was there, and I'd been married to a sock puppet, I could see how he had manipulated me.  As I was already into the process of separation it helped a lot because I could understand what he actually wanted - by not listening to what the sock puppet was saying but tuning in to the real person behind it.

oh and I'd just like to add - once I stopped responding to the sock puppet and talked to him instead I became fundamentally disinteresting for him to talk to and he went on to find new people to trick.

Last edited by lily (May 10, 2022 8:22 pm)

Lost,
 What helped me was, first and foremost, leaving and divorcing him.  Not living with him made a difference, and severing our legal relationship made an even bigger one.  Extracting myself from his toxic soup instead of marinating it allowed me to begin clearing my head of the ongoing mindfuck. Chump Lady has a saying that expecting a cheater to make sense or speak honestly is like putting your head in a blender.  It's true of our situations with gay/trans spouses as well (and double if they're cheating!).  

  There are cognitive techniques like re-framing, which allowed me to move from self recrimination (like "Why didn't I see it?" or "Could I have done something?"  or "If only I'd....[fill in the blank]") or wondering how he could have kept his secret life from me, to helpful mantras like "I didn't see it because he was an expert at deception" to "It's not me, it's him."  Once I had the truth I reframed him from my formerly rosy view of him to a more accurate perception.  

   I also wrote in a my journal about this endlessly, so I could, as the op-ed walkbymyself refers to says, "re-write the narrative of my life."  

  And, I learned about narcissism, entitlement, the abuser's  tactics (like minimization, devaluation, gaslighting, DARVO, etc), and boundaries.  All of that helped me change my mindset.  Chump Lady and Omar Minwalla were very helpful to me.  

  Also, and this sounds trite--but life did not stand still.  Other concerns stepped in to take over (my elderly mother's decline).  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (May 11, 2022 4:08 pm)