I wish Kate Spade would have remembered who she was. I am not embarrassed to tell you that my husband’s infidelity has caused me to consider suicide. I am also not embarrassed to tell you that I hit him when I told him and he minimalized it. Not embarrassed but not proud of that moment either. Infidelity does to the psyche like nothing else. The dichotomy of deeply loving the man that betrayed you while at the same time intensely hating him. Fearing how to live without them while planning your escape. And putting on a happy face to friends and family while dying inside. The dichotomies along with the isolation are soul crushing. I would like to take this opportunity to open the discussion of suicide and infidelity. Has anyone other than me been to that dark place?
LilyLove, I think you bring up some things that have been going through my head these past few days. I can’t say I ever contemplated suicide, but there were many days I wished I could disappear. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t want to feel the weight and pain of his betrayal. I listened the other day to a video of someone i follow on FB and she was discussing her own life and a time where she contemplated suicide because she was in a relationship with a narcissist. She mentioned how she had been so controlled in the relationship that the thought of taking her own life was the only control she felt she had left. She also mentioned that she knew if she did it that he would have to face the judgment of those who knew she had done it because of what she had endured in that relationship. Fortunately, in that moment she had an experience that kept her from taking her own life and she’s gone on to have many happy years. I listened to what she was saying and I thought about Kate Spadd and others who have been in such a dark place that suicide seemed like the only option. I wish there had been someone there to tell them to just hang on and that they could have believed that. Yes, this soul crushing. Three years out and there are times where I think I hate him in one moment and I love him in the next. What hurts me most is how many of us question ourselves in the wake of their betrayal when it had nothing to do with who we are. This has at times stripped me of all the things I knew about myself and prided myself on and the things I’ve always believed in. I’ve questioned myself, my faith, and humanity in general. There have been days where I thought the best thing to do was to walk away from it all, but I know that walking away from it doesn’t erase it from my history. I still have days where my natural instinct to fight against the pain leaves me worn down.. I have to work on staying focused on today. I am not being hurt today and what I feel is residual from his actions over three years ago. I have felt joy in the past three years and I can be happy. It may seem dark in the moment but it won’t be that way forever. Hugs, LilyLove.
I never did but, my husband tried to take his own life a week after dday. Thank God he ended up falling asleep instead. I spent the whole day looking for him. I eventually found him at the hospital. He was such a mess and ended up spending 3 days in the psych ward for trying to harm himself. They had straightened out his medication he was on and he ended up in therapy for 6 months. He was a mess for along time. Even his suicide attempt never stopped the OW from still trying to get him. He ended up threatening her with a restraining order to get rid of her. A few months after that my daughter wanted to end her life and actually had a plan to do it. She is currently on the same medicine that my husband was on when he tried to take his own life. I hate SSRI's even though I know that they help people. She has never had the side effects that he did but I still worry. She had been bullied at school and then his affair, she thought it was her fault and she was a mess too. Thank God she's better now too. And me I don't know how I managed to get through it. I think that's why I constantly talk about what happened. How unreal it was. And I wore it like a badge of pain as SS1 mentioned in the post the other day. I couldn't let go of the facts that this happened to my family. And that the OW actually got sympathy cards from other women for not destroying my family. Only she almost did destroy my family. Enough of the badge of pain. Moving on is hard and I work at it everyday. And my family is whole again even though we still struggle sometimes.
LilyLove, Yes, I have been there. In hindsight, of course, it's easy to see that I wanted the pain to end, not ME to end. But it's hard to see the difference when you're in such a dark dark place. I ache to know that some will succeed at permanently ending a temporary pain. If anyone is feeling as though they can't go on, please please reach out to a crisis line, a doctor, a friend, or here. Nobody is worth dying for, least of all a cheater. My mother did attempt suicide three times, thankfully failing each time. She was sober 25 years when she died of natural causes and was grateful for every single one of those days. And I struggled for years with the idea that I wasn't worth staying around for. Depression lies to us. We need those around us to remind us of that. To tell us the truth. That the world needs us to stick around. That we are stronger than the pain. That there's another chapter to our story that's worth writing.
LilyLove, Yes, I also contemplated suicide because the pain was so deep and so hard. Next week will be my 3 year D-day and I still occasionally have deep triggers and pain and think I'd like to end it but my kids and grands deserve so much better than that from me. My husband often says he feels suicidal a lot and especially when I cry or we have triggers and tears just silently role down my face. I spend two hours in bed yesterday afternoon sobbing about how my 39 year marriage was nothing that I thought it was for my husband. Then I got myself up and took a four mile walk through the woods and felt better when I came home. Please get help, talk to someone, call the help line, talk to a friend but know that I agree that killing yourself over a cheater is not an acceptable choice. Please check back in with us. Much love to you.
Lily Love, Yes I have. Feeling as you say very dark. I was feeling hopeless. I remember, I felt like the torture was never going to end, there was no other way to escape, I couldn't stand one more day of pain, I felt like life had ended. I just wanted the pain to go away. So I took a lawn chair, we live on a farm, went to a beautiful spot ask God to forgive me, I took a 45 revolver put it to my head. On a 45 you have to slide back the top for the bullet to go into the chamber. The slide jammed and I couldn't get it un-jammed. I worked in the ED for years and saw suicides gone wrong but that didn't matter at the time. I wanted quiet and peace. The next time was just a threat. My H was driving and I put a revolver to my head and said - well you always wanted you sorority chick and baby you can have that whore piece of Gamma STD. I was screaming in pain. Then he asked me to put the gun down. He locked up all the guns after that. One time I was reminded of the affair and went to him and said you better put all the guns up. Our therapist asked him, why didn't you take her to the ED? He never really answered. That made me feel sad. I know if that gun hadn't jammed I would be dead. I still think about from time to time. When I go to the lake and look down at the water, I think, how nice it would be to just float to the bottom, free, peaceful and so quiet. That is my darker side and I have never told anyone about it. Not going to do it, just think about it every now and then. What is really a downer is I'm not afraid of dying anymore. I told my husband, when I die just burn me up and bury me in our pet cemetery. I would like a spot next to our last dog who loved me no matter what. His stone says, Our sentry. Forever on duty.
LilyLove, Yes, I too thought about suicide more than once in the first couple of months. I didn’t know how to survive the pain. I felt completely lost. The hardest part was that I kept finding out more painful details about the affair for a few weeks after d-day, even though my husband stopped the affair immediately following D-Day. The digging I was doing and getting new details made everything worse. I finally stopped digging...I couldn’t change what had happened and I kept adding fire to my wound. So, I contemplated suicide, thought of possible ways to do it, but knew I would never act on it. I stayed focused on my kids to keep my thoughts away from such madness. I realized my life mattered and I would survive the pain, with or without my husband. Those thoughts have not come back. So, you were not alone...
Just my thoughts: I think you just want the pain to stop. There is no escape and the idea of death shows up as the only way out. I think it crosses most ppls mind in the very early days. I think it is harder when it is more of an relationship affair which rocks your psyche to the core. It did me. I am sad I wished and prayed for death. I am embarrassed but I think it was only a normal reaction to the huge pain... I am not proud I could not be stronger for my little ones in the beginning. Why does a man who treated me so horribly trump the care and well being of my children?? A suicidal mom is just about the worst mom you can have.
You have to have something stronger then you to pull you out of that nasty dark side. If you are prone to mental health i can only imagine the depressing and suicidal thoughts would be way worse. It was my faith and the drive to do better then that for my kids that helped me out. Before it was just live for the kids take each moment and live for the kids...they need me. Now I live for me a little more each day... that's been what has helped stabilize me and get back to this "normal" I have now. My blank, flat normal life. Smile and pretend. Enjoy the peaceful days. Pray through the ones that won't let my mind stop thinking of how little I ment to the one who meant the world to me.
Yes I once attempted to end my life. When I was 18 and learned the betrayal of my mother and her lifelong lie about my biological father. That said through years of therapy, I learned her sins were not mine to carry! Fast forward to my h betrayal and of course PTSD reared it’s ugly head! I’m grateful to be farther along the path of healing and just have a few deep dark thoughts from time to time and I am so grateful for my hospice team! Not to mention y’all that have propped me up for these years! Hugs!
Everyone, thank you so much for your honesty and openness. I agree that it feels like a solution to the pain. I know better and it makes makes me feel so much better to hear you guys. I’m 16 months in from my first DDay and two months from my last DDay. My H was the trickle master. Having him want me to be farther along than I am since it has been 16 months and forgetting he dropped another bomb two months ago is so frustrating and painful. We have been in therapy for 8 months. Our therapist is amazing and she gets it. When we have a huge fight then he calls and cancels our therapy session. It crushes me when he does it and I feel hopeless. Our therapist won’t see one without the other which makes sense. But then I am left to fend for myself. My children and my grandchildren are my world and they are what keep me going. I would like to tell you guys about my friend I met at my infidelity survivors group. A beautiful young woman whose H cheated on her for 7 years. She has a young child. She called me after heavy drinking and she was filling up the bathtub to commit suicide. She called me after she had called the suicide prevention line and they told her after 20 minutes they had to get off the phone!!!! I was horrified! It took me two hours to talk her down. I thanked God I answered my phone that night. She has the added stress of not having money for therapy. I tell myself if she can get up I can get up. Hugs to everyone ❤️
Yes!
ReplyDeleteI also like:
She realized who she was becoming
and stopped playing the game.
✌
I wish Kate Spade would have remembered who she was.
ReplyDeleteI am not embarrassed to tell you that my husband’s infidelity has caused me to consider suicide. I am also not embarrassed to tell you that I hit him when I told him and he minimalized it. Not embarrassed but not proud of that moment either.
Infidelity does to the psyche like nothing else. The dichotomy of deeply loving the man that betrayed you while at the same time intensely hating him. Fearing how to live without them while planning your escape. And putting on a happy face to friends and family while dying inside.
The dichotomies along with the isolation are soul crushing.
I would like to take this opportunity to open the discussion of suicide and infidelity. Has anyone other than me been to that dark place?
LilyLove,
DeleteI think you bring up some things that have been going through my head these past few days. I can’t say I ever contemplated suicide, but there were many days I wished I could disappear. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t want to feel the weight and pain of his betrayal. I listened the other day to a video of someone i follow on FB and she was discussing her own life and a time where she contemplated suicide because she was in a relationship with a narcissist. She mentioned how she had been so controlled in the relationship that the thought of taking her own life was the only control she felt she had left. She also mentioned that she knew if she did it that he would have to face the judgment of those who knew she had done it because of what she had endured in that relationship. Fortunately, in that moment she had an experience that kept her from taking her own life and she’s gone on to have many happy years. I listened to what she was saying and I thought about Kate Spadd and others who have been in such a dark place that suicide seemed like the only option. I wish there had been someone there to tell them to just hang on and that they could have believed that.
Yes, this soul crushing. Three years out and there are times where I think I hate him in one moment and I love him in the next. What hurts me most is how many of us question ourselves in the wake of their betrayal when it had nothing to do with who we are. This has at times stripped me of all the things I knew about myself and prided myself on and the things I’ve always believed in. I’ve questioned myself, my faith, and humanity in general. There have been days where I thought the best thing to do was to walk away from it all, but I know that walking away from it doesn’t erase it from my history. I still have days where my natural instinct to fight against the pain leaves me worn down.. I have to work on staying focused on today. I am not being hurt today and what I feel is residual from his actions over three years ago. I have felt joy in the past three years and I can be happy. It may seem dark in the moment but it won’t be that way forever.
Hugs, LilyLove.
I never did but, my husband tried to take his own life a week after dday. Thank God he ended up falling asleep instead. I spent the whole day looking for him. I eventually found him at the hospital. He was such a mess and ended up spending 3 days in the psych ward for trying to harm himself. They had straightened out his medication he was on and he ended up in therapy for 6 months. He was a mess for along time. Even his suicide attempt never stopped the OW from still trying to get him. He ended up threatening her with a restraining order to get rid of her. A few months after that my daughter wanted to end her life and actually had a plan to do it. She is currently on the same medicine that my husband was on when he tried to take his own life. I hate SSRI's even though I know that they help people. She has never had the side effects that he did but I still worry. She had been bullied at school and then his affair, she thought it was her fault and she was a mess too. Thank God she's better now too. And me I don't know how I managed to get through it. I think that's why I constantly talk about what happened. How unreal it was. And I wore it like a badge of pain as SS1 mentioned in the post the other day. I couldn't let go of the facts that this happened to my family. And that the OW actually got sympathy cards from other women for not destroying my family. Only she almost did destroy my family. Enough of the badge of pain. Moving on is hard and I work at it everyday. And my family is whole again even though we still struggle sometimes.
DeleteLilyLove,
DeleteYes, I have been there. In hindsight, of course, it's easy to see that I wanted the pain to end, not ME to end. But it's hard to see the difference when you're in such a dark dark place.
I ache to know that some will succeed at permanently ending a temporary pain. If anyone is feeling as though they can't go on, please please reach out to a crisis line, a doctor, a friend, or here. Nobody is worth dying for, least of all a cheater.
My mother did attempt suicide three times, thankfully failing each time. She was sober 25 years when she died of natural causes and was grateful for every single one of those days. And I struggled for years with the idea that I wasn't worth staying around for.
Depression lies to us. We need those around us to remind us of that. To tell us the truth. That the world needs us to stick around. That we are stronger than the pain. That there's another chapter to our story that's worth writing.
LilyLove,
DeleteYes, I also contemplated suicide because the pain was so deep and so hard. Next week will be my 3 year D-day and I still occasionally have deep triggers and pain and think I'd like to end it but my kids and grands deserve so much better than that from me. My husband often says he feels suicidal a lot and especially when I cry or we have triggers and tears just silently role down my face. I spend two hours in bed yesterday afternoon sobbing about how my 39 year marriage was nothing that I thought it was for my husband. Then I got myself up and took a four mile walk through the woods and felt better when I came home. Please get help, talk to someone, call the help line, talk to a friend but know that I agree that killing yourself over a cheater is not an acceptable choice. Please check back in with us. Much love to you.
Lily Love, Yes I have. Feeling as you say very dark. I was feeling hopeless. I remember, I felt like the torture was never going to end, there was no other way to escape, I couldn't stand one more day of pain, I felt like life had ended. I just wanted the pain to go away. So I took a lawn chair, we live on a farm, went to a beautiful spot ask God to forgive me, I took a 45 revolver put it to my head. On a 45 you have to slide back the top for the bullet to go into the chamber. The slide jammed and I couldn't get it un-jammed. I worked in the ED for years and saw suicides gone wrong but that didn't matter at the time. I wanted quiet and peace. The next time was just a threat. My H was driving and I put a revolver to my head and said - well you always wanted you sorority chick and baby you can have that whore piece of Gamma STD. I was screaming in pain. Then he asked me to put the gun down. He locked up all the guns after that. One time I was reminded of the affair and went to him and said you better put all the guns up. Our therapist asked him, why didn't you take her to the ED? He never really answered. That made me feel sad. I know if that gun hadn't jammed I would be dead. I still think about from time to time. When I go to the lake and look down at the water, I think, how nice it would be to just float to the bottom, free, peaceful and so quiet. That is my darker side and I have never told anyone about it. Not going to do it, just think about it every now and then. What is really a downer is I'm not afraid of dying anymore. I told my husband, when I die just burn me up and bury me in our pet cemetery. I would like a spot next to our last dog who loved me no matter what. His stone says, Our sentry. Forever on duty.
ReplyDeleteLilyLove,
ReplyDeleteYes, I too thought about suicide more than once in the first couple of months. I didn’t know how to survive the pain. I felt completely lost. The hardest part was that I kept finding out more painful details about the affair for a few weeks after d-day, even though my husband stopped the affair immediately following D-Day. The digging I was doing and getting new details made everything worse. I finally stopped digging...I couldn’t change what had happened and I kept adding fire to my wound. So, I contemplated suicide, thought of possible ways to do it, but knew I would never act on it. I stayed focused on my kids to keep my thoughts away from such madness. I realized my life mattered and I would survive the pain, with or without my husband. Those thoughts have not come back. So, you were not alone...
Just my thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI think you just want the pain to stop. There is no escape and the idea of death shows up as the only way out. I think it crosses most ppls mind in the very early days. I think it is harder when it is more of an relationship affair which rocks your psyche to the core. It did me. I am sad I wished and prayed for death. I am embarrassed but I think it was only a normal reaction to the huge pain... I am not proud I could not be stronger for my little ones in the beginning. Why does a man who treated me so horribly trump the care and well being of my children?? A suicidal mom is just about the worst mom you can have.
You have to have something stronger then you to pull you out of that nasty dark side. If you are prone to mental health i can only imagine the depressing and suicidal thoughts would be way worse. It was my faith and the drive to do better then that for my kids that helped me out. Before it was just live for the kids take each moment and live for the kids...they need me. Now I live for me a little more each day... that's been what has helped stabilize me and get back to this "normal" I have now. My blank, flat normal life. Smile and pretend. Enjoy the peaceful days. Pray through the ones that won't let my mind stop thinking of how little I ment to the one who meant the world to me.
Yes I once attempted to end my life. When I was 18 and learned the betrayal of my mother and her lifelong lie about my biological father. That said through years of therapy, I learned her sins were not mine to carry! Fast forward to my h betrayal and of course PTSD reared it’s ugly head! I’m grateful to be farther along the path of healing and just have a few deep dark thoughts from time to time and I am so grateful for my hospice team! Not to mention y’all that have propped me up for these years! Hugs!
ReplyDeleteEveryone, thank you so much for your honesty and openness. I agree that it feels like a solution to the pain. I know better and it makes makes me feel so much better to hear you guys. I’m 16 months in from my first DDay and two months from my last DDay. My H was the trickle master. Having him want me to be farther along than I am since it has been 16 months and forgetting he dropped another bomb two months ago is so frustrating and painful. We have been in therapy for 8 months. Our therapist is amazing and she gets it. When we have a huge fight then he calls and cancels our therapy session. It crushes me when he does it and I feel hopeless. Our therapist won’t see one without the other which makes sense. But then I am left to fend for myself.
ReplyDeleteMy children and my grandchildren are my world and they are what keep me going.
I would like to tell you guys about my friend I met at my infidelity survivors group. A beautiful young woman whose H cheated on her for 7 years. She has a young child. She called me after heavy drinking and she was filling up the bathtub to commit suicide. She called me after she had called the suicide prevention line and they told her after 20 minutes they had to get off the phone!!!! I was horrified! It took me two hours to talk her down. I thanked God I answered my phone that night. She has the added stress of not having money for therapy. I tell myself if she can get up I can get up.
Hugs to everyone ❤️