A Note to Myself

In our last couples therapy session, our therapist asked me in the middle of therapy what I needed from Paul in that particular moment as I was crying, thinking about how he is put on a pedestal and I am scum in this affair situation. I didn’t know what I needed. I said I didn’t need anything from him and felt like he has supported me as best as he could during these last ten months of our post-affair life. As a result of this conversation with our therapist, part of my “homework” was to write down in a sentence what I feel I need from Paul at this point in the recovery process. Tonight, I decided to write it down and it ended up becoming more of a free-write exercise, but here are the words that came out on the paper:

“To be honest, I feel like I cannot ask anything from Paul since he gave me a second chance at our life together. I got upset and irritated during our last session when Paul (as a joke) portrayed himself as an ‘angel’ and told me how I should feel about his family supporting us, etc… that I should be ‘grateful’ and I shouldn’t act or think a certain way because it is ‘destructive.’ I don’t enjoy therapy to begin with so I don’t want to be told how I should feel or think…

I am trying to pause and reflect more before I respond and am trying to be the best version of myself every day… I know we don’t really talk about the affair anymore and of course, I don’t want to, but if you ever want to bring it up because something is bothering you or you feel a certain way, you can. I just feel like I ‘killed you’ and I ruined my life at the same time. It will always be in the back of my mind and sometimes I feel like it’s not fair. You said during therapy that ‘You would rather be you, the one that was betrayed, in this situation rather than be me, the betrayer.’ I totally understand that because you can go about your life knowing that you are the loyal, honest one that can feel good about yourself. I am the one who will be consumed with feelings of shame and negativity the rest of my life. My friends say I am resilient and I must appear that way on the outside, but my life has forever changed and I will always be tortured internally and feel uncomfortable about who I am as a human being.

All my life I’ve let other people influence me and I’ve always been a people pleaser. I’ve really never been completely my true self and I don’t even really know today who the real Sarah is at heart. I’ve always tried to impress people and be well liked by everyone. I’ve always taken care of others, made others feel good about themselves and put others first. I am working on finding myself and not worrying about what others think of me.

As we spoke about in therapy as well, there are so many distractions in our life which can be viewed as positive and negative aspects of our healing journey. We have daily routines, we take care of our children and family, we enjoy our summer adventures, there are doctors’ appointments, camps, your job, etc… which goes to show how amazing our children are and how much fun we are having as a family. We have a lot going on which is a good thing, but at the same time should we be taking a step back to check in with our emotions and where we are as a couple?

There will always be sadness deep down and you are the constant reminder of what I did and how I hurt you. I personally don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want to share my feelings, I’d rather go on with my daily life and just enjoy life because who knows if we’ll be here tomorrow. I feel somewhat numb when it comes to my emotions lately because I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole and I have nothing more to say. I just want to continue learning how to be myself and not be a certain way to appease others. I want to continue growing stronger mentally so that I can try to live a happy life. I also miss my parents, tremendously because I think that if they were both alive and still together all these years, I never would have done this.”

One last thought that I would like to share is after our last couples therapy session, Paul pointed out something that hit me hard. I brought up the fact that his family was not so kind to us when we first started dating because as they said they were “bitter and angry,” whatever that meant at the time. I said he should be grateful that I didn’t run the other way when I was treated horribly especially by some of his sisters. And then he said “I was grateful and I am grateful everyday that I get to be in the same room as you.” It stopped me in my tracks. Then he continued, “I think the problem is you didn’t feel the same way.” Paul was right. If I felt the same way, I would never had an affair no matter what anxiety, stress or problems were going on in our lives.